Las Aventuras de una Chica

When you can't buy it... Make it!

2011-06-02T11:40:00.012-05:00

While in Haiti, one of the souvenirs that you could buy (but I didn't due to lack of time) was a custom-made bracelet. They had pre-made "Haiti" ones, but you could also have them write your name or the date or what-have-you on the bracelet. I wanted to get one, but didn't. However, after inspecting a friend's, I figured it was something I could manage. And I was right! All you need is curved thick plastic (I used an almond butter container) and embroidery floss.

Here's the process:

1) Wash out empty almond butter container. Try to get as much of the label off as possible (it might show through), but any label fuzz or goo left on the plastic actually helps keep the floss in place.

3) Remove rim and bottom of container with scissors. (I actually broke a pair doing this so be careful - a razor blade would probably work better)

4) Cut container into strips around 1/2" wide. At the ends of the strips, cut small notches on either side to help hold the floss when you start and end wrapping.

5) Cut seven strands of your letter color and one strand of main color. The letter color strands should be able to wrap around your wrist twice and the main color should be 18" long.

6) Make a knot at one end of the strands and braid them together for 2". Finish with a knot.

7) Start wrapping the main color around the strip and the letter colors. Make sure the seven letter strands lie flat and close to one another. Secure the main color in the notches. Wrap five or six times with the main color before starting your letters.

8) When making letters, flip back the strands that will be needed for each vertical stripe of that letter. For the beginning of an "A," you would flip back all strands.

For the inside of an "A," you would flip back just the top and the fourth strands.

I did three wraps of the main color for the insides of letters, one wrap between each letter, and two wraps between words.

***IMPORTANT NOTE!!!*** Always wrap as tightly as possible and keep the letter strands as close as possible without overlapping or twisting.

9) After finishing your words, wrap with the main color the same number of times you wrapped it at the beginning of the strip. If there's extra uncovered plastic, cut it off, leaving enough space for notches.

10) Secure the main strand in the notches and tie a knot with all the strands.

11) Braid another 2" with all eight strands and finish with a knot.

Enjoy your new commemorative bracelet!

I Wanna Go Back . . .

2011-03-08T16:54:00.003-06:00

sung to the tune of "Slinga de Ink"
- if you don't know it, go ask a Union College student/faculty/alumnus

I wanna go back to Haiti again, the island to the south.
Back to EGO once more, the mountains and the seaside shore.
I wanna go back to Haiti again, Annette's food in my mouth.
I wanna go back, I gotta go back, to Haiti again!

At Eden Garden, northwest of Port-au-Prince,
We play wit' orphans and live de Gospel Word.
At Eden Garden, northwest of Port-au-Prince,
We play wit' orphans and live de Gospel Word.

Play wit' orphans, play wit' orphans,
Live the Gospel, live de Gospel,
Play wit' orphans and live de Gospel Word!
At Eden Garden, northwest of Port-au-Prince
We play wit' orphans and live de Gospel Word!

Someday I'll Appreciate It

2011-02-13T13:08:00.001-06:00

"Are you in grade 12?"

"Sorry, Ms. Giem, I thought you were a student."

"You can drive?!?!"

Good, good, my life is good. Just the way I like it; my life is good.

2011-02-01T14:24:00.003-06:00

And the 1st through the 31st were the first month . . . and Joni saw that it was good.*

And the Lord spoke unto Joni and said, “This month shall be unto you the continuing of months: it shall be the second month of the first year in Mississippi.”

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to rise at 6am:
He prompts me to go running at night.
He keeps me sane:
He reminds me to maintain my heavenly connection for my soul’s sake.
Yea though my students take tests, I shall not fear:
For extra study and review are with them, their books and papers guide them.
He prepares a table for me in the cafeteria:
But I can eat in my room if I want; I have a toaster oven.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me while in Mississippi
And I will not live in the dorm forever.

Then said Joni, “O my Lord, what shall my permanent plans be?” And He said, “Go thy way, Joni; for those plans are closed up and sealed till the time of hiring in spring. . . . Blessed is she that waits and comes to the hundred and three days. But go your way till graduation. For you shall teach, and stand at the front until the end of the days.”

Go ye therefore on Spring Break, and preach to all Haitians, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; playing with the orphans and doing construction and clinics: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the island of Hispaniola.

* (see Gen 1:31; Ex 12:2; Ps 23; Dan 12:8,9,12,13; Mt 28:19,20)

Déjà Vu

2011-01-12T13:56:00.000-06:00

I’m playing in an academy bell choir again.
I’m looking for a spot in the café again.
I’m dealing with dorm noises again.
I’m checking school e-mail again.
I’m playing in an academy band again.
I’m stocking a dorm fridge again.
I’m going to vespers again.

But I’m doing it all from the other side of the desk. :)

Firsts

2011-01-05T15:29:00.002-06:00

“First day of school! First day of school! First day of school!” The enthusiastic words of Nemo jumping through my head prevented me from sleeping just as they did Marlin. Sighing, I glanced at the clock. 11:53pm. Apparently my sleeping habits didn’t have as much to fear from noisy teenage girls across the hall as much as they did from my overactive brain.

What would the students be like?
How many students would I have?
Would I like them?
Would they respect me?
Would I oversleep and be late on the first day of school?

Speaking of firsts, let me list them all:

First time to hear a tornado siren while driving.
First day of 2011.
First time to attend church on New Year’s Day with the A/C on.
First “real” teaching job.
First Mississippi caf food.
First set of classroom keys.
First office.
First time locking myself OUT of my classroom.
First faculty meeting.

Last words from a student as he left my first class of the morning:
"You’re a good teacher.”

Inspiration

2010-04-11T12:53:00.004-05:00

Inspiration comes in all forms. For me, it comes in the form of an ugly, 70's-inspired, Red Heart acrylic, well-used, and well-loved afghan.

Although my mom will argue that it's not "ugly" due to her love of all colors autumnal, it's hard to deny that a orange, gold, yellow, and green zig zag afghan is not that pretty. However, this afghan is one of those items that makes home what it is. Given to my parents as a wedding present from a group of elderly ladies at the St. Louis Central Church, this afghan has been through a lot.

It kept sick kids warm as they huddled on the couch with a large mixing bowl for company.

It ended up in a snow drift one night after Dad unceremoniously dumped Jacque over the porch railing outside after she stole his spot on the couch.

Kids snuggled under it as they listened to familiar Uncle Arthur's stories at worship.

It probably has fruit stains on it somewhere from when I would stretch out and read a book, accompanied by a bowl of frozen blueberries or apples.

In short, this afghan represents what every home should have - comfort, humor, and love.

Thus, I have taken it upon myself to create "ugly" afghans for my friends as wedding presents. After dealing with two indecisive sisters regarding desired colors, these afghans are now done in their respective wedding colors. Although only two have been finished by the actual wedding date, so far eight afghans have come from my hook with another one currently in progress. I guess my sappy self dreams that, with an ugly afghan, a home is complete and will be filled with all that it has brought for me - comfort, humor, and love.

How many digits can you name?

2010-03-26T17:53:00.004-05:00

March 14 was Pi Day, and as such, I decided that it would be appropriate for me to bake a pie. Armed with my mom's copy of Joy of Cooking (must buy me a copy of that some day) and a quart of her frozen raspberries from last summer, I tackled the project. I also included one mango for some extra jazz. It turned out rather nice, don't you think?

I managed to make it back to Union with another quart of raspberries, although they have a different form. While they started out frozen in Idaho, due to an unexpected overnight layover in Denver and a Double Tree hotel with no fridge or freezer, it was a somewhat dubious TSA agent that let me through security Monday morning with a rather juicy bag of raspberries. And I quote: "They're so liquidy...."

Idaho

2010-03-21T19:51:00.003-05:00

Although United's handling of their flights does not fall into this category, many items fill the list of reasons why I love Idaho. As I fill in the hours waiting for my flight, permit me to list a few of those here (in no particular order) as noted during Spring Break.

1) The Boise airport offers free wifi courtesy of University of Idaho; this is particularly nice as it allows me to write posts and amuse myself while waiting for late flights.

2) My parents live here. Although my week wasn't chock full of activities and goings-on, it was still nice to chill at home with the parents, knowing that all was right in my corner of the world.

3) Where else does a state trooper pass you on the freeway, on the right, when you yourself are already over the speed limit? Enough said.

4) The first official day of spring actually FEELS like spring, which is more than I can say for the "lovely" state of Nebraska where it snowed Saturday.

5) Somewhat related to the previous item, a person can take a blanket, a couple pillows, and a good book outside to the backyard in March and relax all afternoon without fear of frostbite, soggy grass, or snowmen-not that I'm normally afraid of snowmen, it just kinda typed itself. :)

6) Although I didn't have the funds to do it myself, Idaho presents the opportunity of skiing or snowboarding during Spring Break.

7) Small churches are established here where they don't mind if two slightly out-of-tune clarinets and one French horn stumble through the hymns Sabbath morning during congregational singing. Also, the greeter (whose name I didn't know) remembered me from Christmas and asked if I had brought my flute along (sadly I had forgotten this Sabbath).

8) Cheap, two-dollar theater still exist instead of being torn down to provide more parking space.

9) Boise is home to the Northwest's most challenging half-marathon: Race to Robie Creek.

10) Residents have multiple reasons to own four-wheel drive pickup trucks.

11) On my flight in, I sat next to the chief-of-staff for Senator Risch, who not only chatted politely with me about my future plans, but also expressed genuine interest in my knitting and asked me to show him, slowly, how I do it.

And eleven seems like a good number to end with; after all, it's prime.

I Know an Old Lady...

2010-03-10T22:25:00.002-06:00

Here's a little ditty written during Abstract Algebra. Even us math majors become bored at times. The meter might be a tad off at times, but I think it still works.

I know an old lady who took MATH 351.
I don't know why she took MATH 351, perhaps for fun.

I know an old lady who tried some proofs
That mocked and sneered and made her feel like a doof.
She did some proofs because she took MATH 351.
I don't know why she took MATH 351, perhaps for fun.

I know an old lady who blew a fuse.
She blew a fuse? Yep, 'cause she was confused.
She blew a fuse because she did some proofs
That mocked and sneered and made her feel like a doof.
She did some proofs because she took MATH 351.
I don't know why she took MATH 351, perhaps for fun.

... or a Woman

2010-03-05T17:55:00.002-06:00

Here's a poem brought to my attention by today's Sabbath School lesson on self-control. Me thinks I like it.

If by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Good Things Come in Threes

2010-03-02T21:23:00.005-06:00

The Knitting Olympics were successful! Although I'm not sure that I quite followed the rules on "challenging enough," I did indeed finish my scarf within the time-limits. Admist pressure to instead work on my senior education portfolio due the next day, I finished the last eight inches of the scarf and cast off on sunday afternoon. The second half of Prairie Home Companion and Thistle and Shamrock accompanied me as my fingers flurried to the finish. I would have preferred to finish while watching the USA/Canada hockey game, but alas, we do not have a TV in the apartment and Jenne never got me her cable info.

The scarf measures in around five feet long and used approximately half a skein of cream while barely denting the skeins of the six colors used for cables. Although it wasn't quite the challenge I expected to do color cables, it was a challenge to finish during the two weeks of the Olympics. Having a portfolio due the next day as well as the project not being transportable with me to the Student Center to watch said Olympics greatly reduced the amount of time available to work on the scarf. So do cooking up yumminess like this red curry:

Recipe is a knock-off of a friends; basically I can't quite remember how she made hers, but mine tastes yummy and that's what truly matters, right? Ingredients are as follows:

1 onion
3 cloves garlic
2 cans diced tomatoes
to taste:
curry powder
coriander
cumin
tumeric
salt

And just what does this yumminess fuel? Well, it fuels my feet as I run in what I now dub my new best friends.

And I'm taking it as a good omen that after my first run in my brand, spankin' new shoes that the distance registered on the treadmill was 3.14 miles. :D

Day 1 aka Day 3

2010-02-17T16:21:00.006-06:00

Sadly, I wasn't able to cast on for my cast during the opening ceremonies. However, I did cast on while watching the opening ceremonies two days later.

Here's the first inch of my Persephone scarf. Figuring out how to work the color changes was a bit fiddly at first but now I'm cruising along. Although I haven't taken any more pictures since Sunday, I now have about a foot of scarf. Here's the back of the scarf as well as the pretty line up of yarn skeins. Since I'm a poor college student, I'm using I Love that Yarn from HobbyLobby.

Let's see if I can stay focused...

Running, Knitting, Baking: A Kaleidoscope of Verbs

2010-02-11T22:22:00.002-06:00

Although I hate coming upon blogs that begin with these words, here they are anyway: "It's been a long time..."

I have decided to give the blog another try, but this time with a new direction. The blog was originally created with the intent of documenting my travels throughout Spain and Europe during my year of studying abroad. Now I'm back at Union College in NE and finishing up my college career. In an attempt to keep myself accountable, I intend on keeping track of my progress in the following three areas: running, knitting, and baking. Here's why:

1) Running: I've decided that I'm going to take on the challenge of competing in Lincoln's half-marathon on May 1. Even if no one reads this blog, I hope to keep track of hope much I run each week between now and then right here.

2) Knitting: I've also recently decided to join up with the Knitting Olympics, both the Harlot-sponsored ones and the Ravelympics (via Team uKNITversity). This blog will be a great spot to keep track of my progress and see how it all turns out. I'll be casting on tomorrow night during the opening ceremonies for a multi-colored cabled scarf based on the pattern from Smariek's Persephone Mitts.

3) Baking (and cooking too I suppose): I've been experimenting in the kitchen recently (I'm starting to get sick of that word), and I've decided that I should share the yumminess with whoever might happen to drop by. So I'll be posting pictures and commentary regarding how recipes do, or don't, turn out.

Here's to diverse verbage! :)

Those Crazy Spaniards . . .

2008-04-03T10:47:00.004-05:00

Among the words that I will never forget after my year in Spain (which include "¡bandejas!" and "¡vamos chicos!") are the words "¡Valencia en Fallas!" These words belong to Valencia's biggest fiesta and are the beginning of the chorus to a song with the same title. What are "Las Fallas"? Bascially, an excuse to stay up late and light firecrackers and burn things. Yay! A pyromaniac's paradise! Seriously though, las Fallas technically start March 1 although there's preparations for them all year long. A "falla" itself is actually a wood/cardboard/wax/paper construction that can be up to 3-4 stories tall that they burn the night of the 19th. The fallas normally poke fun at different politicians and controversial events. The only person that they can't make fun of is the king. Oh, and there are Fallas Infantiles (little ones normally kid-friendly) and Fallas Mayores (bigger ones that can be x-rated). Every afternoon at 2pm there's a "mascleta," which is a 5-10 minute fireworks show with the objective of making the most noise possible.

It gets so loud towards the end that it's deafening even with your ears plugged and you feel like you're in the middle of WWII.

The school took us to one on March 4 and I took a short video before I couldn't stand not covering my ears anymore. I know it doesn't sound that loud over the computer, but trust me, it was crazy. After that, we went to the Ninot Exposition. This is where each fallero group picks one of their ninots (dolls/statues) from their falla that they think is emblematic of their falla and enter it in a competition. After the competition, the winning Ninot Infantil and the winning Ninot Mayor are kept aside to save in a museum and all the rest are put out with their falla to be burned later. Yep, all that work every year and EVERYTHING gets burned except for two small statues such as these

My next event to experience with las Fallas was a free, outdoor concert in a city park Saturday night the 15th. I'd never heard of the artist before but Cristian and his friends had invited me along, so heck, why not?

The opening acts were crum but the main band, M-CLAN was actually pretty good. My only problem with them was they played "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and it drove me nuts that they were singing it in Spanish because then I couldn't sing along in Spanish (since I obviously don't know the Spanish lyrics) nor could I sing along in English because the Spanish input was driving all memory of English lyrics out of my head. Great music but just a little bit frustrating, but I still had a great time. After that, was a fireworks show and then we all wandered around the streets meeting up with different random people and looking at fallas.

Cristian, Jennifer (friend of Elias that had been in Spain that summer and now is studying in Italy), and I crashed at Elias and his brother's apartment around 4am and then got up at noon the next day to go into Valencia again for more. After the mascleta, I decided to go back to the school for some much needed rest since I'm not used to the whole Fallas schedule like all the Spaniards.

Tuesday evening I headed back in with Sasha, another ACA student here, and we watched the Ofrenda de Flores and took many pictures of pretty costumes and cute kids and the monument to the Virgen.

I liked the Fallas' Virgen better than the Virgen de Pilar in Zaragoza because the flower-covered structure actually ended up looking like a woman at the end and had the correct dimensions.

Then we went and sat in Starbucks reading (Sasha) and people-watching (me) for a couple hours before it was time to head off to fight our way through the crowds to get a good spot to watch the Nit de Foc (Valenciano for "Noche de Fuego" [castellano] or "Night of Fire" [english]). It all went well until we tried to get around a corner. Then we were squished beyond belief in what I thought was the worst manner possible until I experienced worse the next night. But we made it through and sat ourselves down in the street to wait for the show.

While waiting we alternately chatted with some French girls in Valencia studying Spanish and a middle-aged man that practiced his English with us while we practiced our Spanish with him. Yay for random conversations! And then there were the fireworks. I had already seen one of the fallas' "castellos" (what they call fireworks in Valenciano) the night of the concert and since we had been a ways away (think 3-5 second delay on the sound of the bangs) and it had been so long that I had started to get a little bored, I was a tiny bit skeptical about this show. But it did NOT disappoint.

I have never seen such good fireworks in my life. It's like New Year's Eve, the Fourth of July, and the end of the world all rolled into one. We were just one bridge down from where they were setting them off and it felt like we were directly underneath them.

The show went for about 14 minutes or so and it seemed as if there were four or five different fireworks shows all rolled into one, each with their own finale. And the actual finale itself had to have lasted for 4 minutes solid. Absolutely amazing. I will never be satisfied with another show.

Unless of course I get to come back to Spain for las Fallas sometime. Keeping the fingers crossed. Right after the fireworks show ended, Sasha and I muscled our way back around the corner, got called "chicas agresivas," and ran our way back to the train station to catch the last train back to Sagunto.

Oh, one other fun point to the show. You know how in the States they'll start the fireworks as soon as it's dark so that you can get the kiddies to bed at a decent hour, 10ish or so? Well, the Valencians have a different perspective. The fireworks didn't START until 1:30am. Woohoo! Which is why we were worried about catching our 2:20am train. But we made it just fine. The next day was spent sleeping really late and then we headed back into Valencia at 7pm for "la Crema" or more descriptively put, the pyromaniacs' paradise.

We wandered around the streets looking at fallas and shopping in the street markets until 10pm when we got to see our first falla burn. Even for a little falla, it still made quite the bonfire.

Afterwards there was more wandering during which we sampled "bunyoles" (a donut that's kinda like a churro)

and looked at other fallas, such as the 2nd place one (my favorite),

until around midnight when we watched a falla mayor burn. This one was a little hotter than expected and it was great fun to watch the crowds try to push their way back.

Here's the burning schedule more or less: fallas infantiles: 10pm, first place and the town plaza one: 11pm; fallas mayores: 12am, first place and the town plaza one: 1am. Yay for staying up late! Then it was push and shove and be carried by the crowd as we tried to situate ourselves in a good spot to watch the falla from the town plaza burn.

At one point we stayed in the same spot for a good 10-15 minutes without being able to move. Completely dangerous as you never know who's going to elbow you or throw up near you (yep, that happened to me . . . stupid drunk got a speck of it on my sleeve, too, grrrr). I don't know how the really short ones survived.

After being shoved and pushed for more than 45 minutes and doing some shoving and pushing of our own, Chris, Shaun, Sasha, Brittany, and I landed ourselves in a decent viewing spot where some Basque guys promptly started to hit on Sasha after Chris' yells of exuberance for las Fallas had alerted them to the fact that we were Americans. Quite funny actually to listen to them offer us (and specifically Sasha) a place to stay at their apartment that night. Unfortunately they were smoking pot and second-hand pot is NOT a favorite of mine. But the falla from the plaza did not disappoint and it was great to watch it burn while they set off another mascleta-type fireworks show from the plaza at the same time.

Once again, the Spaniards come up with some crazy ways to have fun but it's amazing!!! And basically I would love to come back to Spain every year after this for las Fallas. And then stay another week down in Andalucia for Semana Santa. Why Andalucia? Because we went there after las Fallas on a 9-day school trip there and it was b-e-a-utiful. Tell you about that next time. Chau chau!

The Land of the Dutch!!

2008-03-23T17:53:00.002-05:00

I'd have to say that one of my favorite parts of being in Europe and getting to travel is visiting the countries that I KNOW I have ancestors from. Being in Germany brought out the German roots just a little more (along with being mistaken for a German in Rome) and being in Holland had almost the exact same effect. The only problem was that I wasn't able to visit the Dutch cousins due to some technical difficulties. But next time! Next time I will find them. Our visit started with a train ride from Eindhoven up to Groningen.

Why were we visiting the virtually unheard-of city of Groningen? (Which, by the way, is pronouced with a hawkingish h-sound at the beginning) Well, that would be because Southern Adventist University was doing an orchestra tour through Belgium and Holland and their concerts in Groningen were the ones that Brittany and I could make it to. And we wanted to see Emily.

And even that was pushing it a little as we were skipping a Friday of classes the weekend before quarter finals. But no worries. I'm pretty sure we both did fine on our tests afterwards. Anywho, back to Holland. We made it safely into Groningen, despite missing one train connection. We just took the next train headed in the same direction and all was fine. After lunch in the train station, we decided that it was time to find the church for the performance that night, before wandering around Groningen, taking in the sights. It was at this point that I realized that I had not remembered to print out directions to the church. Nor did I remember the name of the church. But no worries, we would just find an internet cafe, log onto Myspace, reread e-mails, and Google the place. No problem right? Well, we found an internet cafe and it was even free! But they had Myspace blocked. At this point, it was my random memory skills that remember things like it originally took 27 hours to hand-make a peep (those nasty Easter candies) that allowed me to remember that the name of the church was something along the lines of "Martinkerk." Google helped me to realize that it was actually spelled "Martinikerk" and after checking out their webpage, we confirmed that yes, there was a performance by SAU that night at the church. Score!

So we went our merry little way off into the drizzle to experience Holland. Our first realization was just how much the Dutch use their bikes. Oh my goodness. Death by bike is actually a legitimate worry in Holland. There are so many bikes and you're more likely to see a parking garage like this than parking space for cars.

Unfortunately for us, it was not tulip season yet, the other famous Dutch characteristic. However, the daffodils and crocuses were blooming so we still got flowers.

There were also the canals, of course.

And also, by some magic streak of luck, as we were walking around Martinikerk, getting pictures from all sides, we stumbled across what were probably the only four blooming tulips in all of Holland. Right there, just clumped together for us. Made me happy, it did.

The reunion with Emily was great, the concert was amazing,

the organ stellar, the skull head sticker in the heat vent disconcerting,

the coffee in the department store yummy, and the all around atmosphere that first night great. Brittany and I had booked a room in the same hostel as the orchestra so we just became groupies for the trip and rode with them back to Sneek (pronounced "snake") for the night. There, we talked till 1am or so before going to bed. The next day included a concert for the worship service at the SDA church in Groningen and a soup and sandwich potluck afterwards.

Another great Dutch experience in which we met a little old lady who actually had heard of Idaho, and even Boise since she had relatives there and also got to taste a fake ham that's better than Wham. It was also the first time that in the name of providing translation services I saw TWO headphone splitters used on the same device.

Afterwards, the orchestra packed up again and drove down to the Amsterdam Marriot airport hotel. There, Brittany and I (with permission from the orchestra director) snuck into Emily's room with the intentions of sleeping on the floor. Since Southern was leaving the next morning at 4:45 for the airport, the only logical thing for the three of us to do was party till all hours of the night.

We started off by taking the fast public bus to Haarlem where we saw Corrie Ten Boom's house,

a cheese shop (that unfortunately closed 10 minutes before we got there - no Spanish schedule here folks!),

bought Stroopwafels, and had coffee (with a "k"!) in a restaurant before heading back to the hotel.

Then we headed down to the lobby to talk rather than disturb Emily's three roommates. But we only were there a little while before management kicked us out since I was lounging on their sofas in pajama pants. Oops. So we trekked up to 10th floor and parked ourselves on the floor of the elevator lobby by some chairs where we figured no one else would bother us. And no one else in the form of humans did. However, as we were preparing to head back down to sleep (at 1am of course - Emily could sleep on the plane), when the elevator doors opened, out came a little dog, all by himself.

I still cannot think of a good explanation on how that dog got into the elevator all by himself. However, we picked him up, went down to grab a camera, took some pictures, named him "Brinker," and then delivered him down to the front desk where we relieved a rather worried desk worker.

Then it was off to bed. Sunday morning Brittany and I crawled into bed after the Southern girls and Emily left before actually getting up around 8am. Then it was a never-ending journey by public transport back to Spain. It went like this: public bus, another bus, tram, walk around Amsterdam in the rain for 30 minutes,

train, bus, plane, metro, train, and walk back to the school in the dark. Yay for public transportation!! And that was Holland folks. Here's a foggy/rainy picture of a windmill to round out the Dutch experience.

Oh and the fuzzy slippers at the airport that I really wanted to buy but couldn't cause they were too expensive (stupid euro).

Gira a Castilla: Madrid!

2008-03-23T09:52:00.003-05:00

The last couple days of our trip were spent in the capital of this amazing country: Madrid.

The first night that we arrived, we had nothing to do other than wander around half the city in search of cheap pizza just to finally decide on kebabs from the place almost directly in front of our hotel. The next day was spent outside of Madrid rather than inside of it. Our first stop was at the Escorial, palace/monastery/cathedral/private school all rolled into one.

Originally built for Felipe II, he spent half of his ruling time in Madrid in a normal palace and the other half in the Escorial, living in three tiny, bare rooms, basically coming as close to a monk as a ruling king can. The building complex itself was more or less what you would expect from Spanish architecture, so nothing new there. However, two really cool aspects of the Escorial are the library and the crypt. The libary is like most others expect that all of the books are shelved so that the pages rather than the binding are showing. Kind of odd and I don't remember the explanation, but it was neat to see all the shiny golden-edged pages facing out. Another great aspect of the library was the ceiling, which had paintings of all the different academic and philosophic areas. And yes, I will admit that I'm enough of a math nerd that I was double checking their addition in the painted equations.

The crypt at the Escorial holds the bodies of almost all the monarchs and their spouses since Carlos V. The coffins are arranged in such a manner so that the monarchs are on one side of the room and the spouses are on the other. Isabel II is the only woman to be buried on the monarchs' side, with her husband Francisco de Asis being the only man on the spouses' side. The royal bodies aren't placed immediately in the crypt but rather are placed in a "rotting room" first for fifty years to deteriorate down to the bones and lose their smell before going into the ornate crypt. All the spots left are now taken up by bodies still in the rotting room, which means that the currently living Spanish royalty have to decide where they want to be buried.

After the Escorial, we drove out to "El Valle de los Caídos." *

This monument is out in the middle of the mountains and is a memorial/burial ground for troops who fell during the Civil War. Commissioned by Franco, after it was finished, he decided that he too wanted to be buried there and thus, he is.

By far my favorite cathedral in Spain, the monument has a huge 100m high stone cross outside and a cathedral carved into the mountain. With huge soaring stone vaulted ceilings and enormous creepy statues of archangels (which look more like fallen angels to me), the cathedral doesn't really feel like a church.

It makes me think more of a pagan worshipping place that the dwarves in Middle Earth might have constructed for themselves inside the Mines of Moria. Creepy, but a very, very cool creepy.

After we got back to Madrid, we all went out to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe for Erin's birthday.

Quite the undertaking considering the first time the bus we needed came by the bus stop, it didn't stop for us and the restaurant apparently doesn't normally do reservations and the tables weren't set up for a group when we arrived.

However, a good time was still had by all and I had some AMAZING (expensive, but amazing) American food. Mmmmm... yay for Caesar salad and Spinach & Artichoke dip with real tortilla chips that weren't stale. And on the way back from the restaurant, we had a lesson in statistics and that pedestrians are NOT almighty.

Our next full day in Madrid started with a walking tour of the city, passing by the Prado, numerous plazas with fountains, arches, the Plaza de Sol (that's Madrid's city symbol in the background, the bear and the tree),

where Kilometer 0 is located (starting measuring point of all highways in Spain),

the Plaza Mayor,

and the shopping districts. We had lots of free time before meeting up again in the afternoon for a tour of the Prado. During that wandering, not only did Brittany and I find a couple different yarn stores and buy yarn to make a baby set for an American ACA couple here who left early after 2nd semester who couldn't go to Madrid because she got pregnant and was having morning sickness problems (Brittany knit the hat and I knit the booties and did the eyes and feather poof on the hat),

but we also found a used antique bookstore where we spent a good hour. Although I don't have a picture and really wish I did, I found a book in the store that had been written by an "Eugenio Noel." Maybe we do have Spanish relations. Who knows? Another fun shop that I found was this one. It's a good thing that Jacque got married to who she did because now we have a name for that fifth J.

The Prado is a really good museum and the most important in Spain, but I would have enjoyed it more if the tour hadn't been in the afternoon and my feet hadn't been killing me and if I could have taken pictures like in the Louvre. As such, I didn't take advantage of the extra time after the tour to look around more on my own, but since I'll be back to Spain someday, it doesn't really matter, right?

Our last day in Spain only had one scheduled visit - the Palacio Real. However, before heading off with the school, I got up a little early to walk/jog over to the main city park to see the Crystal Palace. Although it was cloudy and crappy weather, the palace was still really pretty and I would totally want to get married there if I lived in Madrid or anywhere close.

After that was the Palacio Real. This Palace isn't the residence of the current kings (although past kings have lived there), but rather is a museum when it's not being used to State functions and such. Apparently the school had only paid for us to visit the Armoury and the Farmacy musuems, but not knowing that, Sasha, Brittany, Amanda (friend from the States who's SMing in Madrid), and I bluffed our way into the actual palace with the permission of the guard to look really quick for our teacher to find out what was going on. Of course, we ended up going through the whole palace at a leisurely touring pace, but I will say that I kept my eyes open for Chelo the entire time.

After the palace, it was more free time to shop and walk around Madrid on our own before loading up the bus and beginning the 4-5 hour trip back. All in all a good tour. Except that I never could find just the right black boots to buy. *sigh*

*pictures of the interior of el valle de los caidos are taken from a random website because we weren't supposed to take pictures inside and i was too lazy to try to be sneaky with my camera.

Gira a Castilla: Segovia

2008-03-21T13:38:00.003-05:00

Only one day was spent in Segovia, but that didn't keep us from seeing two different cool castles and one really old aqueduct.

The first stop in the morning (we had arrived at the Segovia hotel the night before and partied late in one of the rooms playing a rather heated game of Mafia) was at the Aqueduct.

This aqueduct was constructed by the Romans sometime during the 1st or 2nd century AD. And not only is it still standing in good condition after two thousand years, this aqueduct was constructed without the use of any sort of cement. It's held together purely by friction and gravity and those sorts of things. I don't know about you, but I'm in awe of the Romans and their engineering. After the Aqueduct, we walked through Segovia on our way to the Alcazar, the resident castle of the area.

A beautiful piece of architecture, rumor has it that this is the castle that Walt Disney based his Sleeping Beauty castle off of. This castle was quite the center of the Spanish realm for awhile, being the residence of Isabel la Católica and hosting random different Spanish court functions. I was a big fan of all the armor etc that was displayed and tried to decide between a knight on either side

or a knight on a horse.

In the end I decided the mounted knight was the one worth my time. :)

After the Alcazar, we had free time to eat and Brittany and I decided that we needed a pastry to go with our lunch. Then we decided that it needed to be eaten in a park in the sun. Then the park decided that it would eat the knee of my jeans and chew on my actual knee. I was not amused. No worries though, I'm all healed up now from the scratches and bruises and the jeans will become shorts in a couple weeks when it's just a little bit warmer here in Sagunto.

We packed up the bus and headed out for Madrid early in the afternoon, stopping on the way at the Granja de San Idelfonso. I'm not sure what exactly was the function of the palace, but I do remember that it was built as a replica (more or less) of the Versailles Palace outside of Paris.

After seeing both Palaces, I think I like the Spanish one just a little bit more. Not sure why, but I do. Maybe it's because as you're approaching it from the street, it reminds you a little of the castle from Beauty and the Beast.

And after the Granja, it was back in the bus for a couple more hours until we reached Madrid!

Gira a Castilla: Toledo

2008-03-17T17:02:00.003-05:00

Our first stop during our tour to the province of Castilla, antiguo Toledo is a step back in time with twisted cobble-stoned streets winding their way between shops of jewelry and swords and Don Quijote paraphernalia.

Toledo is probably my favorite "little old city" in Spain so far. That probably has something to do with the fact that it has this great little park that's quiet and looks out over the river and the surrounding hills. And for those that know me, I'm a big fan of the nature stuff. You can keep your big cities and shopping districts for yourself. But I'm getting off-topic. Toledo is a city of a combination of religions. I really don't know/remember everything they told us but basically there's been a mix of Jew, Christians, and Muslims in the city for pretty much all of its history. Or something along those lines.

The first afternoon/night that we were there we had free time to wander the streets before we all met up again to visit the cathedral. Huge and freezing cold, my favorite part of this cathedral was a room with portraits of the different bishops that had presided in the cathedral. Unfortunately no pictures of the inside.

The next day we visited a beautiful church that originally had been a Jewish synagogue built in the moorish style that was later changed into a Catholic church and today stands in disuse. I absolutely love the moorish style with the arches. I think one of the really unique parts of this building is that from the outside it's pretty plain-looking but as soon as you walk in, you're hit by the incredible beauty in the simple white arches.

Afterwards we visited another cathedral with a completely different style. Commissioned by Isabel la Católica, this cathedral has the mark of los Reyes Católicos all over it, including their motto of "tanto mota," which is short for "tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernado" which loosely translated means "Isabel is just as much sovereign over Spain as Fernando and vice versa."

Isabel was the queen of Castilla and Fernando, her husband, was the king of Aragón, and after they got married, they pretty much united the country for the first time. The cathedral was originally built with the intention of being the burying place of Isabel and Fernando, but in the end they were buried in Granada (which I'm going to see in a few days! woot!). The cathedral is extremely ornate and a little much for my taste, but whatever.

While there, our professor/chaperone for the trip, Chelo, picked up some bodyguards. And yes, she's really that short. For comparison, Nate, the guy on the right, stands at about 6-2.

And here she is again with all the ESDES guys.

Afterwards we had free time for the afternoon before leaving for Segovia. Brittany and I wandered around in search of cheap lunch which was almost impossible. But luckily, our search took us to the edge of the town to the aforementioned park. And luckily again, we found a kebab place nearby that was open and bought some amazing falafel wraps. We took them with us to the park, found a bench in the sun, and proceded to sit and eat and sun ourselves for the next hour or so with an amazing view in front of us.

It took quite the effort to get ourselves up and moving again to make it back to the hotel to leave with the group.

Oh, and on the way back to the hotel, I met my knight in shining armour. Too bad I had to leave him in Toledo.

On the way out of Toledo, they stopped the bus at a scenic overlook and let us take pictures of the city and the hill it's situated on.

skiing the spanish way

2008-03-17T15:56:00.004-05:00

Sunday, Jan 27, the school had a ski day! And for me, for once, it actually was a "ski" day, not just a board day called a ski day because it's more conveniente/easier/more general to say. And why was Joni, the intrepid boarder actually skiing?

Well that would be because it was cheaper. And when you've got the euro workin' against you, you go with the cheaper option. However, since I hadn't been on skis in four years, I went with snowblades, the fun, short ones (that I went ahead and assumed would be easier). The ski hill (and "hill" it was) that we went to is called Javalambre and although is at the same altitude as Bogus Basin (my home mountain) is nothing like it.

Basically a mountain of fake snow and bunny hills with one red run (their system includes green-easy, blue-intermediate and red-"hard"), I imagine it's about the same as Great Bear in Sioux Falls, SD.

Thanks Mom and Dad for never wasting the money and waiting till we had real skiing in Idaho. :P Even though it was January, being that we were in Spain and only an hour and a half away from the Mediterranean, the skiing conditions were like spring...lots of grainy snow and slush.

However, I still enjoyed myself. I think it was lucky that I was on skis instead of a snowboard because the skis gave me just enough of a challenge that I still enjoyed my time even though the snow was crap. The other nice thing about the day was there was a snowboard snowpark competition going on that day so although I did see a lot of pathetic attempts at rail-riding and jumping, there were also some great ones.

Which of course inspired me to do some jumping of my own on the random little jump trails on the "mountain."

No worries, I really am in control although I apparently look out of control, and I landed the jump quite nicely, thank you very much. All in all a good day spent mainly with Allyson (americana)

and random different Spaniards from the church and school (which I managed to not get any pictures of, of course). But I did get one of me and my roommate, who's learning to snowboard and doing a pretty good job of it too, I'd say.

Here're "los Americanos" at the end of the day.

Why, yes, I did go to Rome . . .

2008-03-14T08:23:00.004-05:00

Way back in January, while I was visiting Becky in Florence, we decided that we wanted to go see Rome. Or rather, I wanted to see Rome and Becky was nice enough to come along with me and spend her own money even though the school was going to be taking them to Rome later on and paying for everything. Being that we're poor college students, we did a very quick whirlwind tour of Rome, Jan 2-4, Wed-Fri.

After missing the train we were originally going to take, we train-hopped our way down to Rome from Florence rather than wanting to spend two hours waiting in a cold station for the next direct train to Rome. An experience I wouldn't really recommend. We managed to find our hostel and then set off to experience a little bit of the city. First stop was the Borghese Gardens and Art Gallery. The gardens are gorgeous, think of an Italian version of New York's Central Park. Since you have to have a reservation for the gallery we didn't stop in but just tried to make reservations for Friday. Afterwards, we walked around in search of food and ate some amazing sandwiches at a bar where after the bar tender unsuccessfully tried Italian on me, her next choice was German, which also rewarded her with a blank look. Gotta love the mix of people in Europe. :D

Being that I'm studying Spanish, a big stop for me in Rome were the Spanish Steps.

Even though they're really not much, just some steps next to the Spanish consulate, they are the "Spanish" Steps. So I was happy to sit down and pause for a picture. We then wandered through the streets on our way to find the Trevi Fountain.

I love the fact that the fountain is located in such a way that you can't see it from a long ways off down some street. None of the streets directly approach it so you're walking along, and bam! there's the fountain with billions of people. Our night walk continued on to the Pantheon

and then the Piazza Nuova where I had my first really big disappointment in Rome. One of the fountains that I really wanted to see was the Four Rivers fountain. It's a representation of the four most important rivers in the world and unfortunately was undergoing restoration.

Boo. While we were in the Piazza, which had a fair-type thing going on, Becky and I munched on big huge donuts slathered in Nutella before heading back to the hostel for the night. Mmmmmm.....

Day Two in Rome started way too early with a visit to the Vatican. After waiting for an hour and a half in line (glad it wasn't summer) we entered the museum and wandered up and down the halls looking at all the cool old stuff and famous paintings and sculptures and such. One great painting is the "School of Athens" which has a bunch of famous thinkers and such, including Euclid. Yay for geometry!

At the end of the museum is the Sistine Chapel. An amazing ceiling, I must say. That Michelangelo really knew what he was doing. And yes I did take a picture when I wasn't supposed to.

I managed to escape the censure of the poor employees who's job is, as Becky put it, "to be hated," as they tell everyone to be quiet and to not take pictures. After the museum we went into St. Peter's Basilica,

where we did not see the pope but did see Michelangelo's "Pieta." A little bit of a disappointment. I was hoping for something bigger. Outside the basilica, we spotted the Swiss Guard in their funny, out-dated uniforms and then went on our way.

We passed by the Vittore Emmanual Monument (apparently locals call it the "Giant Teeth" or something like that), another monument under restoration,

on our way to try to see the Trevi Fountain in the daytime (which we didn't). But I did throw a coin over my shoulder into the fountain which means that I should be destined to return to Italy at some point in my life. We then went back to the hostel where we discovered that we now had new roommates in our dorm room who were Spaniards (yay!) that we managed to have a conversation with. It's always so nice to run into Spanish people when I travel to other parts of Europe.

Friday began early again with a visit to the Borghese Gallery. This art gallery did not disappoint. Because of the reservation system, it's less crowded than the Vatican and it's mainly all people who WANT to look at everything rather than just rush through the museum to get to the end and see the most important work (think Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel). The sculptury there (unfortunately I don't remember the guy's name, started with a "b") was simply amazing. There was a sculpture of Napoleon's sister on a couch that was so well done, the cushion looked real and I wanted to touch it to make sure that it really was made of marble. After the gallery, we went down to the Colosseum. But not before going ALL the way back to the hostel to collect my camera battery that I had left in the charger that morning. Silly Joni. But yay for the Colosseum! Woot!

Pretty amazing structure, although I did think it was going to be a little bigger than it was. We also visited Palatine Hill where we got to wander through ruins and crouch in random holes and take pictures.

After that was the Roman forum which had all sorts of cool and random things like stairs that go nowhere,

the cremation site of Julius Caesar,

the rostrum for public speechs

and the left-over columns from once-magnificent buildings that now are nothing but something for me to try and fail to remember the name of.

We then went up the hill to the big teeth monument I mentioned earlier and had a great view of Rome.

Then it was back down the hill to go visit the prison that held both Peter and Paul. Talk about weird and cool . . . I was in the same place as two men from the Bible. This is the grate that they would have been lowered down through into the prison cell/pit.

Then it was some more church hopping to see different statues that have been deemed important by art scholars but tend to disappoint after all you've heard about them. Michelangelo's "Moses"

and Bernini's "St. Teresa-in-Ecstasy."

Then it was back to the hostel to collect our things, buy some amazing gelato down the street,

and hoof it to the station to catch our train back to Florence.

Ciao ciao Roma!

Christmas in Germany and Italy

2008-02-09T15:46:00.000-06:00

After arriving back in Sagunto from País Vasco, it was one night in my dorm bed before heading out again into the wild blue yonder of Europe. This time though I had the luxury of knowing that someone waited for me at the other end of the flight and it wouldn’t be another four or five days of sketchy hostels and bocadillos for every meal. Friday morning I left for Italy to spend a week, including Christmas day, with my Uncle Jim and Aunt Dawna and cousin Jacob. Being that Ryanair is evil, it no longer flies into Venice from Valencia. This would have made my trip a lot easier and cheaper but whatever.

The journey to Jim and Dawna’s in Avion, Italy was not a fun one. For starters, it was raining in Valencia, and I mean raining. Since Ryanair is the cheap airline that it is, they didn’t move the loading gate up to the plane and instead we still had to walk out on the tarmac to the plane like always. The problem was that with so much rain, there was about one to one and half inches of water in puddles, streams, lakes, and rivers across the tarmac on the way to the plane. Add rain pouring on your head and it wasn’t pretty. Thankfully, I had my snow jacket with a good hood so only my jeans got really wet. But there were people boarding the plane that were completely soaked from head to food as the Ryanair personnel did nothing other than hand out paper towels with stressed smiles.

Because of the rain, we were late starting and finishing to board and ended up leaving an hour behind schedule. Not only did I have the stress of worrying about arriving in Italy in time to catch my train (which I didn’t) but I also had to deal with this two-year old that was screaming his head off next to me. Nothing his mom or dad could say or do made him shut up. He screamed the entire time we were boarding and preparing to depart. The only thing that actually put him to sleep was the takeoff. Once we were level in the air, I wondered what was different about the plane’s atmosphere and realized that it was the silence, the blessed silence. I looked down at the boy and he was conked out. Apparently the excitement of flying had kept him awake and cranky during his normal nap time. Another worrisome aspect to the takeoff was the huge thunderclap that resounded while we were waiting for takeoff. Such things combined with wet, possibly slippery runways and cheap airlines do NOT inspire confidence in flying.

Not withstanding, the rest of the flight was uneventful and I made it to Bergamo, Italy, a town outside of Milan. Outside the airport, I bought a bus ticket to the Bergamo train station, and had my most crowded public bus ride to date. So many people crammed their way into the bus at the first two stops that at one stop, the bus driver actually closed the exit doors before a man had time to make his way to the exit and the passengers had to call to the driver to not leave and to open the doors again. All the time while squished in this human sardine can, I kept wondering how I would know when the bus arrived at the train station. Thankfully, pretty much everyone left the bus at the station and I was able to recognize it as such. I bought my ticket without problems, but was still stressing once on the train because it wasn’t the original train that I had told Aunt Dawna I would be arriving on and plus, I wasn’t seated in the coach that was printed on my ticket, and what if my coach got switched off at some station and I ended up in some other part of Italy? To further complicate matters, no conductor ever stopped to look at my ticket so I couldn’t ask confirmation for whether I was on the right train. Since I had a stop-over where I switched trains, I thankfully had a chance to phone Dawna and inform her of my change of plans. Also, I made sure to match coach numbers on the second leg of the journey so I was a little less preoccupied for that part. And let me tell you, I’m not sure how many other feelings outrank the one you feel when you arrive in an unknown location to see someone waiting for you that you know and love. I was pretty darn happy to see Uncle Jim standing on the train platform.

He took me to their home and fed me supper/late-night snack and then took me on a tour of the house before letting me crash in a super-comfortable queen bed. Ah, the luxuries of actual homes as opposed to hostels and hotels. The next morning was spent packing and preparing everything to leave to head north. Uncle Jim, Jake, and I would be going to Garmisch, Germany for three days of skiing while Aunt Dawna stayed home with a cold and a very old and sick Bo (their golden lab retriever for the uninformed).

We left around 1pm and headed north through the Italian Alps, the Austrian Alps and into southern Germany. It was so gorgeous driving through that I kept forgetting to ask Uncle Jim to stop so I could take pictures. I just sat there staring out the window as we drove along chatting about every subject under the sun. The roads were nice too, a large portion of the time spent on the Autobahn. On the way, we drove through Innsbruck, Austria and also passed by a big huge dam that burst at one point, drowning a bunch of people in the valley below.

We arrived in Garmisch after dark and checked into the lodge before going to find something to eat. Garmisch is home to a US military base and the lodge we were staying in was actually an R&R station for US troops. Those coming back from various active duty sites, such as Iraq, have a chance to stay here and rest a bit before shipping stateside. Not only active duty members use it though; anybody in the military can come during their leaves and stay there with their family if they want. And it was nice lodge, let me tell you. One of the really cool things about it that Uncle Jim told me is that they charge different rates according to your military rank. It's cheaper for a private to stay there than for a lieutenant colonel. It was a little weird, to tell the truth, to be surrounded with so many Americans. It was you were in the US until you left the grounds and were in the rest of the town, which was distinctly German.

For supper the first night, we went to a typical German restaurant where the food and atmosphere was amazing. I definitely heard my German roots calling me. I had a pasta soup with a bread dumpling to eat and all of us had apple strudel for dessert. There are not words to describe this apple strudel. It probably had enough calories for an entire week but it was GOOD. Piping hot from the oven and served with ice cream that tasted like it was homemade from milk obtained just that morning from the cow and with whipped cream from the same cow. Absolutely heavenly. For entertainment, there were these two young boys would were dressed in the typical German knickers with suspenders and alpine hats that did a knee-slapping dance thing to guitar and accordian accompaniment. The other entertainment, or at least for us Americans, was trying to figure out what was happening in the back room. For every couple mintues, another group of two or three Germans would enter the restaurant and walk to the back room, all dressed in typical alpine wear. There were probably about 50 or 75 German men of all ages from 17 till 60s or 70s. We were trying to figure out what could possibly draw out 17-year-old Germans on a Saturday night and convince them to mean with old men and dress up in folk costume. Finally we came to the conclusion that it was the next meeting for German domination, but since we hadn't seen any short dark men with mustaches, we considered ourselves fairly safe. Until we saw the amount of beer that the waiters carried back into the meeting room. On the way back to the car to return to the hotel, we walked through the quaint streets and window shopped. I saw a yarn store but unfortunately it was closed and we never had time the rest of the trip to return.

Sunday through Tuesday were spent skiing the slopes during the day and relaxing and watching movies in the hotel room at night. Let me tell you, three days of snowboarding on European-length slopes that are not conducive to snowboarders will kill your thighs and calves. As the slopes were designed for skiers, there were many cat tracks that frequently went UPhill and many paddlebars and t-bars, which are not fun for snowboarders. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Especially Monday. That was the day we spent skiing the highest mountain in Germany, the Zugspitz. After lunch, Uncle Jim and I took the gondola up to the peak to take some pictures and so that I could say that I had been to the top of the highest mountain in Germany. Yay! However, I will confess something. I wasn't actually AT the top. I was 50 or so feet lower and only saw the top. But in my defense, it was the highest I could go (the rest of the way was currently blocked off, you can go to the tippy-top during the summer) and it was farther than any of the rest of my family back home has been. So there, hah!

Christmas Eve, we spent watching movies and contemplating what Santa would do if I got on his lap and told him (if it happened to be a young servicemember who was playing Santa) that what I wanted for Christmas was him. Tuesday, Christmas Day, we only skied for the morning from 8 till noon before packing up and getting back in the car to drive back home for Christmas dinner and presents. This was the day though that I went down a run next to gates for a run where the world cup was once held many years ago. That hill was freakingly steep. I seriously thought I was going to die. But I made it down, amazingly enough.

On the way home, we stopped at an Italian WWII graveyard, where apparently they would bury soldiers two deep to save on space.

Arriving home around 7pm, we ate a scrumptious Christmas dinner prepared by Dawna and then opened Christmas presents. Although it wasn't the same as being home, I was still really happy to be with family for Christmas day and still be able to have a tree and presents from home and Reese's Christmas trees. :)

The day after Christmas was spent in touring Venice. We took the train in and then just wandered through the streets, purposely getting lost on the way to St. Mark's square. The cathedral there is crazily ornate with huge mosaics on the ceiling that were made using 24k gold.

Supper was my first authentic taste of Italian pizza and it was amazing. I loved just walking around on the cobble stones, never knowing when buildings would give way to yet another picturesque canal. And Uncle Jim even convinced me that yes, I needed my picture taken with a gondolier.

However, we didn't take a gondola ride considering that rides run around 100€ a trip. One of the really interesting bridges that we saw was the "Sighing Bridge."

This bridge connected the city jail with the city court. It is an inclosed bridge to prevent escapes and afforded a last glimpse of freedom for guilty prisoners as they were led from the courts back into the prison. Many would sigh at the thought of all that they were losing, hence the name.

After Venice, it was off to Florence on Thursday to meet up Becky and experience more of Italy.

Northern Spain

2008-02-09T08:31:00.000-06:00

In an attempt to take advantage of all my time off at Christmas, and since my plans to go to other "more exciting" (as it were) places in Europe weren't working out, I decided to go up to País Vasco and Navarro, two provinces in the north of Spain. I traveled with Adam Kotanko, another ACA student here in Spain. There's a possibility that Jenne or Jacque might know Adam since he's a senior at Andrews (journalism major, if you're curious). And before anyone starts wondering or making suggestions about our level of friendship, that's exactly what we were and what we are now, friends and nothing more.

We left Sunday by train and headed for Zaragoza, where we had a two-hour layover before hopping aboard a train for Bilbao. I had heard that Bilbao was little more than a big, cold industrial city in País Vasco, and I was told right. The first night we got in late and did nothing more than find our hostel and watch some spanish TV. Monday dawned grey, cold, and dreary but that didn't stop us from heading our to "see" the town.

The old-part of Bilbao is pretty cool with its cobbled streets and old churches, but it would have been better without the misty rain and without the lesson that churches close for visiting hours during the afternoon.

So we did a lot of walking, saw the OUTSIDE of a lot of buildings, and decided that it was a sin that a city as big and as centralized as Bilbao did not have the Starbucks that we both developed a craving for while walking around in the cold. Another thing that bothered me was the old cemetery that we walked past was locked up and I couldn't go wander through the old gravestones.

Tuesday was a much better day. Better weather and better agenda. We got relatively early to go to the bus station before starting our sightseeing so that we could buy a bus ticket to San Sebastian for that night. After that, we headed to the Guggenheim Museum, a contemporary and modern art museum that's housed in a stellar building made of titanium.

I really liked the outside, and in spite of some misgivings about people's ideas of modern "art," enjoyed most of the exhibits as well. One of the cool things about the Guggenheim was that while we were there, all the temporary exhibits were filled with American contemporary/modern art because they were hosting a 200+ years of American art exhibit that I forget the name of now.

I definitely encountered those exhibits of one square placed upon another and labeled art, but there were also pieces of art that while I might not have grasped the entire meaning of the work, at least looked like something that required talent and couldn't have been done by one of Mom's preschoolers. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of most of my favorite pieces since photography was prohibited in this museum, but I do have a couple pictures that I was able to take surreptiously from unseen corners. There's the modern representation of Venus de Milo (thumbs up);

the digital pillars with spanish and english poetry scrolling by on the front and basque poetry scrolling on the back, representing the oppression and brief outlawing of the basque language (thumbs up);

the big huge wavy and spirally walls of iron (not sure about this one),

the flower puppy outside (thumbs up),

the big spider outside (thumbs up even though creepy),

the metallic tulips [?] outside (thumbs up),

and hanging light bulbs with pile of licorice candy that I really wanted to steal (thumbs down).

After the Guggenheim, we grabbed some Subway for lunch, and then wandered some more and saw some cool bridges before heading for the bus station.

At the bus station, I was reminded of Jacque's Greyhound experience as our bus arrived an HOUR late. Besides having to wait, it was frustrating to constantly be worrying if somehow we had missed our bus and were waiting in vain. While waiting and complaining, we met an elderly couple from Philadelphia who come to Spain every winter. They offered to help us find our way to the hostel in San Sebastian and in spite of a few disagreements on their part about when to get off the public bus in San Sebastian and which way to go on a street, we made it safely to our hostel and enjoyed some tips about what to do in San Sebastian.

On Wednesday, we made a full tour of San Sebastian, seeing the cathedral (which had an oyster holy water container, how cool is that),

another smaller church with a really cool ceiling where we actually got to listen to an organist practicing on the pipe organ,

the two beaches famous for surfing in the summer (with absolutely NO waves in the winter),

climbed to the top of a mountain where we had a view of San Sebastian

and were able to go through a free museum on the history of San Sebastian and get a closeup of the big Jesus statue,

visited the wind combs (more pieces of modern "art" I don't understand but are famous),

see the summer home of the Spanish royalty,

and curse the lack of kebab restaurants in San Sebastian. I did, though, have my best-so-far Spanish tortilla sandwich in a San Sebastian bar. For those who have never had the fortune of eating a Spanish tortilla, it's basically a big plate-sized fried patty of egg, potatoe, and onion that kind of resembles an omelet but not really. They slice it up and put it between baguette-type bread and it's quite scrumptious, especially when they also put tomatoe and garlic in the sandwich. Another bit of Spanish and also European trivia, bars frequently serve lunch items as well as function like American bars in the evening/night.

Friday morning started WAY too early as we left the hostel at 6 to walk about a mile to our bus stop to leave at 7am for Pamplona, Navarra. Pamplona is home to the world-famous running of the bulls on July 7. The most recognized corrido de toros in Spain, it celebrates the festival of San Fermín and if you want to attend, you have to reserve your hotels about a year in advance. Crazy huh? So we decided to go the cheaper way and visit it on our way back to Sagunto.

There's pretty much nothing in Pamplona except for the famous plaza de toros so we went there,

took some pictures, walked through the artisan's fair inside, walked the street where they run the bulls,

and went to the train station. On the train on the way back to Sagunto, I slept and knitted on a scarf for my roommate and reflected on the trip.

I decided that I like the north of Spain but mainly the countryside version and I would love to go back to San Sebastian in the summer.

Paris in a nutshell . . . a very large nutshell

2008-02-08T06:21:00.001-06:00

In order to actually get this blog published, I'm going to take you on a whirlwind tour of Paris. There will be pictures, names, and short descriptions and anecdotes. Welcome aboard.

Tuesday morning, we decided to start with the Sacre Coeur, a cathedral built with Moorish influences, that doesn't really seem like a Christian church at all, but looks like a Muslim temple from outside.

Perched on a hill overlooking Paris, it's a beautiful structure with snippity guards who thankfully don't speak Spanish. :D Lesson: When told not to do something in Paris, pretend to not speak English or French, and only mutter in Spanish. This enabled me to keep most of my pictures of the Sacre Coeur's interior.

After the Sacre Coeur, which left you with a feeling a reverence, we went for a complete change in atmosphere and headed for the Moulin Rouge. Appropriately situated in the red light of Paris, the Moulin Rouge was a bit of a disappointment.

While there was a windmill, it wasn't THAT big and all in all, I wasn't impressed. What did impress me were the banana and nutella crepes that we bought from a stand next to the Moulin Rouge. Absolutely amazing. If you go to Paris, go buy crepes from the stand on the street corner to the right of the Moulin Rouge.

After we finished our scrumptious crepes, we headed down through the streets in the general direction of the Louvre. In route we saw some cool churchs, a theatre, and the Opera Garnier. This building is cool enough that we didn't realize that we were entering through the back until a guard told us to exit and go around the building.

After taking pictures in front, we went inside to see if we could purchase entrance tickets. We could have, but as there was a rehearsal taking place, we wouldn't have been able to go in the main auditorium, just the lobbies, and hallways. That didn't make it worth it for me to buy tickets so we went on our merry little way. In case you didn't know, the Opera Garnier is the opera house where the story of the Phantom of the Opera was set.

Before we arrived at the Louvre, we passed through the ritzy, brand-name shopping district with its 5-star hotels and such. We also passed Godiva Chocolatiers and I would have stopped to buy chocolate except it was croweded at the time and also, I'm going to Belgium later. Why buy it in Paris when I'll be in Brussels itself?

Once we arrived at the Louvre, we weren't actually at the Louvre itself. Instead we were at the other end of the Tuileries Gardens where you can find two other smaller museums. One is the L'Orangerie (or something like that) with Monet's water lilies collections and I don't remember the other. As it was Tuesday, the museum was closed. Although we didn't go inside, I did have a narrow escape with a lion outside.

From the gardens, we continued down past the huge busy square with an Egyptian obelisk. This square also happened to be the same square that housed the infamous guillotine. Our chosen direction took us up the Champs-Élysées. After wandering past all the pretty boutiques and expensive brand-name stores, we arrived at the Arc de Triomphe.

Situated in the Place de Charles de Gaulle, cars zoom past in a 5/6-"lane" roundabout. I put lane in quotations because while 5 to 6 lanes would fit, and they most certainly drove that way, there are no lines painted. The only access to the Arc is through a pedestrian tunnel, unless of course you would like to risk your life trying to cross the roundabout. Located underneath the Arc is the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with a perpetually burning flame.

After grabbing some lunch on the Champs-Élysées, we hopped a train for Versailles. Unknowingly, we only purchased an in-city metro ticket in order to get out to Versailles because the commuter train system of Paris runs through the same stations as the metro. So we caught a metro to a connection with the train and then rode it out to Versailles. As we weren't using the right tickets, when we attempted to leave the station, the turnstiles wouldn't let us out. Considering that the station inside the city don't make you use your tickets to exit, we didn't know what to do. Not wanting to pay a fine for not buying the right ticket, we ducked under the turnstile and made our way on to the Versailles. We were lucky that time that no one caught us. After I left Ally in Paris (she wanted to stay an extra day to go to Disneyland Paris), she got caught in the same situation and had to pay a 25€ fine. Ouch.

The gardens at Versailles are free and were pretty although I really want to go back and see them in spring, just like the rest of the parks and gardens in Europe that I've seen so far.

The only downside to the gardens in winter is that many of the statues are all winterized with canvas coverings, which while amusing to look at, don't give you an authentic feel for the place.

Probably the most frustrating part of our entire time in Paris happened next. We thought that the Palace itself (with the King's and Queen's apartments and the Hall of Mirrors) closed at 6:30pm. So we left the gardens at 4:30 to go enter. We bought our tickets and then when we went to another desk to grab maps of the building, were told that the museum was actually closing at FIVE pm, and we would have only half an hour to view the apartments and the hall. We hurriedly walked through the light rain that began to fall to the entrance to the palace and fretted while standing in the security line. Once inside, we weren't sure which door to enter inspite of the maps we had and took a guess. Thankfully it was the right building. However, as we were speed-walking through the Prince's apartments, I asked a security guard for directions to the Hall of Mirrors. This is when we heard the dreaded words that it had already been closed and the section we were in was the only one open. Needless to say, we were angry and frustrated at the ticket office people for not warning about this (let's just say the tickets hadn't been cheap) and started enjoying the rooms we were walking through. Once we reached the end of them, we noticed a big grand staircase that people were coming down. Knowing that the Hall was upstairs, we disregarded the sign saying "Do Not Enter" and went up the stairs.

If people were coming down, why couldn't we go up since we'd paid our fair share? The worst that could happen would be if a guard came up to us and physically stopped us from going up. Which thankfully, no one did. Then it was like a fish against the current as we went through the Queen's apartments from the wrong direction. But we made it to the Hall of Mirrors in time to walk the entire length and take pictures in an uncrowed atmosphere, since most of the other visitors had already been herded in the direction of the exit.

After that, we went slowly back through the Queen's apartments, taking more pictures. After making it to the Hall and through the apartments, I understand why they close earlier in winter--the light from outside is of a crummy quality. So while I really don't have that great of pictures, at least I HAVE pictures and I have the memories, whether good (the Hall) or bad (the employees). Eh, sie la vive, or however those French say it.

After Versailles, we headed back to Paris (this time paying the actual price) and had kebabs for supper. During which this poor guy was embarrassed by his friends when, after confirming that we spoke English, they made him come up to us and try to start a conversation to practice his English. Unfortunately, the poor guy was so embarrassed he couldn't say anything. Ally and I didn't know what to say either beyond "hi" and "what's your name" since he wasn't carrying his own side of the conversation.

Wednesday dawned bright and early for us as we headed to the Eiffel Tower. We wanted to be there when it opened in an attempt to avoid the forecasted year-round crowds. We arrived 10 minutes before the ticket offices opened and ended up only waiting roughly 30 minutes before we were in an elevator headed to the top of the tower. I had thought that the early morning light would be excellent for views of the city, but apparently Paris is a hazy little place.

But no worries, I still enjoyed my time up at the top, took lots of pictures, found out that New York is 5849 km from the tower,

and mailed a postcard to my parents from the first level of the tower.

After descending the tower, we took more pictures out front of the tower, were accosted by the immigrants who believe all English-speakers are rich and want to donate to their cause, bought and ate lunch within sight of the tower, and relaxed before heading off for the next part of Paris.

On our way to Notre Dame, we stopped in the Luxembourg Gardens, beautiful even in winter,

Paris' version of the Pantheon,

and the Latin Quarter. I was a little disappointed in the Latin Quarter as it seemed to me just like any other small shopping district, but whatever. Maybe there's more life in the summer.

Notre Dame was not a disappointment.

The cathedral soars above you and makes you feel pretty insignificant. Also, the gargoyles are fascinating and reminded me of the TV show from oh-so-long-ago where they would come to life at night and go flying about the city doing I don't remember what.

Inside the cathedral is magnificent too, even to someone oversaturated with European cathedrals. One of the fun parts of traveling Europe at Christmas is seeing all the different Nativity Scenes that each church and cathedral put up.

After Notre Dame, we rested our little feetsies before walking to the square of the Bastille. On the way, I saw a cheese shop and took a picture, just for you, Jenne.

Unfortunately, the prison no longer stands and all there is to commemorate it is a pillar, but for the history factor, it was still worth the visit for me. From there we caught a metro down to the Eiffel Tower again so that we could see it at night. It's just as amazing at night as during the day, and it even has lights that sparkle for 10 minutes every hour. We took pictures of it as normally lit up, went to go have pastries and coffee in a cafe within site, and then returned to take more pictures/videos as it sparkled. Freezing cold, but worth it.

For our last day in Paris, and this was somewhat badly planned, we went to the Louvre.

I say badly planned not because we didn't have enough time inside, but because we were tired and lasted a shorter time than we probably could have been capable of if we had visited it our first day. Nevertheless, we made it to almost all the exhibits open and definitely saw the big pieces. Such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace,

Venus de Milo,

the Code of Hammurabi,

and the Mona Lisa. Speaking of which, I'm really not a fan of Mona. It's just a small portrait of an ordinary woman and her smile isn't really that intriguing. Not only that, but they only let the school groups actually get close to look at her.

I was more interested in some the HUGE paintings they had displayed (you never realize from textbooks just how big they are) and watching local art students/artisans sitting in the halls of the Louvre, copying the masters.

My major disappointment with the Louvre was that the wing for the Dutch painters was closed off and I couldn't see as much Rembrandt, etc as I wanted.

After the Louvre, we split ways as I went back to the Opera Garnier to see if they were having reheasals that day and Ally went to the Monet museum. Unfortunately, the auditorium was still closed but I did get some more pictures of the main lobby. Fortunately, I was able to lust after the Godiva chocolate again (although I didn't buy anything because I didn't know any French to fight my way through the crowd at the counter) and this time sneak a picture of the chocolate-dipped strawberries. Mmmmmm...

Ally and I met up again at her next hostel (she had changed for her next two nights in Paris) and there we parted ways for the last time, she to stay before meeting up with other friends in Amsterdam and me back to Valencia. Thankfully, I had no problems catching my shuttle bus back to the airport, and the flight caused me no problems either.

And that's Paris, my friends!

París! (part one: arriving)

2008-02-01T03:19:00.000-06:00

Trying to plan for Christmas planning was somewhat of a pain. I already knew that I was going to be visiting Uncle Jim and Aunt Dawna for the week of Christmas, but this meant that my travel plans weren't quite jiving with other people's. Either they wanted to travel when I already had plans, or they didn't want to travel the same way I did, or they didn't have the same budget, or they were just plain wishy-washy, or they were going back to the States. Thus, I ended up going on only four different trips with four different groups of people. But it was still fun and amazing, and I'm glad I got to see the places I did. The first of these four trips was to Paris. Yay! And this is the story of getting there:

I was going to be touring the city with a new friend from ESDES, Allyson. The first weekend free that we had of break, I stayed at the school to recuperate from exams and get a breather. She went via train to Geneva/Colognes to visit at good friend studying French there. We decided to meet up the 10th at our hostel in Paris. She would be taking the train in, I would be flying via Ryanair.

One of the things that really bothers me about Ryanair, is how they monopolize your travel, making trips that seem really cheap at first, not quite-as-cheap in the end. For example, to get to Paris, they actually fly you into Beauvais, an airport an hour and half outside Paris. And of course they fly you in so late you miss the last commuter train of the day. And taxis are around 100€ to get to Paris. Which leaves you with no choice but the take the 13€ one-way shuttle. If you're doing your math correctly, a round-trip ticket that was originally 15€, is now 41€. Which is still infinitely better than normal airlines, but the hidden extra costs are still a little annoying. But whatever.

Thankfully, the flight from Valencia to Paris went fine, no delays, no luggage issues, nada. I was even able to find the shuttle bus easily and had no problems getting on with my printed internet ticket. Once I got into Paris, it was another story. It was 10pm and I was supposed to be meeting Ally at 10:30 at the hostel. But I had no clue which metro to take, how much a ticket cost, or even how to buy a ticket. Thankfully, I had looked on a map and written down street directions to get to the hostel. And thankfully, the metro had a good map showing street names and metro names and all that jazz. So I managed to communicate to the man behind the ticket window (who thankfully spoke English, but only a little) the first line that I wanted to take. I bought my ticket, found the correct tunnel, and got on the metro. All the while realizing that I was by myself, I looked very much like an American tourist, and it was 10pm. No worries, Mom and Dad, I'm still alive and healthy and this story has a good ending.

I managed to switch lines successfully and then was deposited outside in the cold night air, being at the right crossroads near the hostel, but not knowing which direction to take for the hostel. So it being dark and late and a relatively sketchy side of town, I decided to take the logical course of action and use a taxi to go the rest of the way. The problem with this was that I had no clue how to go about calling a taxi since I didn't have a cell phone and even if I did, where was I going to find the number of a taxi company? So instead I looked for a friendly looking shop on the dark street and decided on a internet café. The guy there showed me where the taxi stand was and even demonstrated how, if you push a certain button on the post, the light at the top comes on to signal taxi drivers that there's someone at the stand waiting for a ride. The problem with this was that the light didn't work. But the guy assured me (with his broken english and hand motions) that there should be taxis coming by at a regular basis and all I had to do was just flag one down. Well, that would be fine and dandy if I lived in a big city and did this sort of thing on a regular basis, but I don't. So the first three or four taxis passed me by with no recognition of my need at all. And then, even when one finally did stop, he had no clue where the street was where the hostal was located. So he drove off, wishing me luck with the next driver. At this point I was really getting worried. It was really late now, I hadn't arrived at the hostal at the time I'd told Ally, and apparently the hostal was some random unknown place.

After sending a quick prayer up to God, I waved down another taxi and showed him the address of the hostal. This guy didn't know where it was either but he happened to have a GPS navigation system. Unfortunately, he didn't understand the 2% rule and couldn't figure out that the "t" in "atlas" was a "t." He thought it was an "x" and kept trying to enter "rue de axlas" in GPS. Which obviously wasn't a street (thank goodness for that, who knows where I could have ended up at), and in the time it took him to struggle with this and then finally ask me what letter it was (and honestly, I don't have bad handwriting), the meter had gone up two euros. And THEN, even after he had the right address and we were on our way, he managed to miss a turn and had to make a huge circle to get me to the hostel. Which I'm sure cost me other extra two euros. And then he had the gall to not have change for a 20€ so I had to go into the hostal, ask the desk worker for change, and then go back out and pay the guy. By that point, I just wanted to throw a five in his face and tell him to go away, but considering I was in a foreign country, and couldn't really argue him down to a cheaper price and who knows what would have happened if I hadn't paid the "required" price, I paid him what he asked and went on my tired, not-so-merry way. In reality, I was just glad (and a little proud as well) to know that I had navigated myself to Paris via plane, bus, metro, and taxi and had arrived without major incident. I honestly think that as long as the taxi fair hadn't exceeded the 20€ I had in cash, I would still have been happy to make it safe and sound.

Of course my problems still weren't over. Once I was back in the hostal lobby, I realized that I had forgotten to bring my copy of the hostal reservation. But I told myself it wouldn't be a problem and proceeded to explain to the nice Chinese man that I was meeting friend there who had probably already arrived and her name was Allyson Cronk. Well, he understood me but then couldn't find the name in the handwritten guest register. So I told him the name again, and he looked again. And still couldn't find it. So he asked me again for a registration paper, I told him again that I didn't have one, and that I was POSITIVE that my friend had already arrived and her name HAD to be on that list. Either that or I was screwed. Well, apparently the third time is the charm, and this time the man was able to find "Mme. Allyson" on the list. So he called her room, she came down, we hugged, and life was happy.

The End.

A Spanish Christmas

2008-01-28T07:13:00.000-06:00

So before I took off for my random travels to different European locations (and also inbetween trips), I had a couple different Christmas experiences here in Sagunto, including the ESDES Christmas party, the girls' dorm Christmas party, and the church Christmas concert.

The ESDES party took place on Nov. 30 in the hall of the Theology/ESDES building. We "celebrated" all the different dates that the Spaniards observe as a part of the holiday. We started with a "lottery." Every year, on Dec. 22, the Spanish national lottery has its biggest drawing. This lottery is such a big deal that they start selling tickets for it in August. Crazy, huh? Well, we had our lottery and I actually won! Woot woot! Unfortunately, my prize was a box of coconut turrón and since I'm not a fan of coconut, I ended up giving it to one of my professors sitting nearby who expressed an interest in it since he loves coconut but never gets any at home because his wife doesn't like it.

Next, we celebrated Christmas Eve (Nochebuena) by singing "Silent Night" in Spanish. For Christmas morning, we all opened up our gifts. We had drawn names and were supposed to buy small gifts for under 5 euro. I ended up receiving a candy-filled cup from Belros, probably the biggest Spanish candy chain company, and a little stuffed animal ordament.

After that, we celebrated New Year's Eve (Nochevieja) with bubbly and eating grapes and confetti. The Spanish tradition for Nochevieja, especially in Madrid, is to eat twelve grapes at midnight, one at each bong of the clock in the main square. If you manage to eat all twelve with the right timing, you supposedly have good luck for the coming year.

The last holiday that the Spaniards celebrate as a part of the Navidad season is Epiphany or "Dia de los Reyes" - Jan.6. In most houses, this day is actually a bigger event than Christmas and the kids get just as many, if not more, gifts than on Dec. 25.

And that was the ESDES Christmas party. Cheers!

A couple days later, on Dec. 3, we had the dorm party. For this, there was food and birthday cake for all the birthdays between August and December

and a white elephant gift exchange.

Only two of the ESDES students stayed for the gift exchange and I'm glad to say that I was one of them. It was actually quite fun watching the girls ooo and ahhh over every gift as it was unwrapped and fight over the stuffed animals. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of opening a new gift rather than just choosing an already unwrapped gift and so I ended up with candy coal and a lollipop, that of course no one wanted and therefore didn't steal from me.

Bah. Oh well, I still had fun socializing with all the dorm girls, even if they were highschoolers.

We had our last day of classes on Dec. 6 and then on the 10th I left for Paris. Yes, there is a post coming soon about that trip. But I returned back to Sagunto on the night of the 13th so that I could be here for one last rehearsal and the concert on Saturday night the 15th. Although some people told me I should just skip and use the time for traveling instead, I'm really glad I stuck with my commitment and came back for the concert. Not only was it a chance to rest and recuperate and eat/sleep for free, the concert was a blast.

The concert wasn't just the orchestra; the primary/secondary choir and the bachiller/theology/community choir both performed as well.

Also, a church member and his son performed with the orchestra director in a trumpet/trombone/percussion trio. The kid had to only be about 5 or 6 and yet he demonstrated AMAZING rhythm and musical skill on his little drums and cowbell. He was SOO cute! I've got a picture of him but I wish I had a video as well.

The last song on the program was Silent Night and first just a two violins, the piano and a cello accompanied the choir. Then the entire orchestra played while the congregation joined in the singing. It's such a pretty arrangement that I arranged with a friend beforehand to have her videotape it. And now you have the option of listening to either the choir version (which is prettier) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OUQPKijYWM or the congregation version (where you can see me playing the flute). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9VB-9kpbBM Take your pick.

One other thing pertaining to Christmas: Union sent all of us carepackages and I have to show you the customs slip. It's so entertaining. The package contents listed and package value marked are totally not correct.

Much more was included and it was worth a LOT more than they say. But whatever. I got my package and it made me very happy. Many thanks to everyone who contributed!

And thus ended my Spanish Christmas festivities.

Gira a Barcelona: Days 3 & 4

2008-01-23T03:51:00.000-06:00

The first half of our first full day in Barcelona could rightly be called "Gaudí's Barcelona."*(see note at bottom) We started out by visiting La Sagrada Familia, a cathedral that was started in 1882 and they're still working on it today.

I'd have to say that my first impression from the outside was, "wow, that's pretty ugly for a cathedral." Once inside though, the view improves. Inside it's all smooth white columns with a spiky ceiling.

I think I read once that the inside is supposed to resemble a bat cave. I'm not sure that's the vibe I received, but it's still pretty cool. The only question I had while inside was, "why didn't I think to build something that I can charge admission for while I'm still building it?"

Granted, Guadí, the guy who designed it, is now dead, but I bet his family's still benefitting. Thankfully though, they have blueprints up so you know what it's *supposed* be eventually.

The parts that I liked the most about the cathedral were the stained glass (there needs to be more) that shines prettily on the columns,

and the front doors.

These doors were covered with different Catalán names and frases from the Bible. Also, he stuck this nifty square of numbers on one of the doors that when combined in different patterns, the numbers add up to Jesus' age at the time of his death.

In the basement of the cathedral they have a museum of the construction of the cathedral along with various furniture pieces (like lecturns and confessionals) that have been finished for future use (assuming that they finish it before Jesus returns, which I highly doubt) and explications for different parts of the cathedral (like the number square thing). They also let you look into Gaudí's old workshop where artisans and engineers and architects still work today.

After the cathedral, we went to the Park Güell,

a park that Gaudí designed to surround houses of the "rich and affluent." There we saw Gaudí's own house

and a bunch of cool mosaic-type benches

and towers and even a lizard/salamandar/thing.

The park was huge and beautiful and I'd love to see it sometime in spring, when I'm sure it's really blooming.

After the park, they took us to Las Ramblas, which is basically like the main shopping trip of Barcelona. In the middle of the street is a pedestrian strip where you can find vendors selling everything from the normal touristy stuff to flowers to small pets. It was in one of these flower shops that I saw cotton bolls on sale for the first time. Wish I had taken a picture, sorry. Along this strip, you have Spain's largest food market (that reeked of meat), the opera, and other random stores. It was here that Kimmy, Erin, and I had an unsatisfactory lunch (well, they didn't like theirs, mine was fine) and so we went in search of some gelato to make ourselves feel better. Lady Luck was with us and we entered a gelatería where the guy working the counter was cute, the gelato amazing, and we each got 6 or 7 samples before finally making our choice. Everytime after giving us a sample, the guy wouldn't wait for us to ask if we could have another sample but would just hold us three more sample spoons and wait expectantly for our next choice. Both the service and the gelato were amazing. Afterwards, we wandered around the streets with no particular destination in mind. Except for me of course. I had done an internet search before leaving Sagunto and had in hand several addresses for yarn stores in Barcelona. Unfortunately, the only store I found was closed at the time for siesta. Bahhh!

The next item on the agenda was meeting back at the hotel so that we could all walk together to the Picasso Museum in Old Town.

I have to admit that I didn't anticipate liking the museum since I'm not a fan of Picasso's abstract art. However, the little known fact about Picasso is that before he went wacko with his paintings, he did some really cool, realistic paintings. He was a genius and painting crazily well when still in his teens. Of the abstract ones, the only painting that I really liked was an adaptation of Velazquez's "Las Meninas" (which I just realized from my internet image search, is unfinished).

And it is here that I state that I am soooo glad that I took an art history class before coming to Europe because it has enabled me to recognize and appreciate better the famous paintings in the various museums I've visited. For example, when I saw this painting and its title, I could see in my mind the original. Thanks Schroeder!

After Picasso (we could leave when we wanted: I was there for about 2 1/2 hours and I heard later that some people actually stayed there 5 hours), we had free time but some of the group, including myself, chose to stay with Luis Amoros, the teacher in charge of the trip, for a nighttime tour/walk of Barcelona. We went through the old part, down to the wharf,

and back up Las Ramblas. It was a great time to hang out and I got a better perspective of Amoros as a professor in the more relaxed setting. By the time we got to the start of Las Ramblas, it was late and freezing so I hurried my way back to the hotel with some friends.

The next day, we started out early and headed to the town hall of Barcelona

and the Capitol (as it were) of Cataluña (both in the same plaza opposite each other).

Then we went to the "castle" where Colombus presented his New World treasures to Isabel and Ferdinand.

After that was the cathedral of Barcelona (covered up in the midst of a restoration project, just like the rest of Europe)

with a sign that seemed to come directly from an Adventist academy

and then more free time until we boarded the bus to return to Sagunto. During this free time, I went off on my own so that I could be sure to make it to my yarn stores. Luckily this time I was able to find two stores, both open. One I found for the first time, and the other was the one that had been closed during siesta the previous day. I was really happy to find them open because the other shop that I had found the very first day had been closed every time I went past EXCEPT for when we were walking as a group to the Picasso Museum and I couldn't stop. Just a little irritating. But in the end I was able to buy myself Spanish yarn, and all's well that ends well.

On our way out of town, we stopped for few minutes at Olympic Village where the summer Olympics were held in 1992.

Yay for getting to be in Olympic Stadium. How cool is that? I just wish someday I could be in one for the summer olympics as a sand volleyball athlete. *sigh*

Then it was back in the bus for 4/5 hours as we drove back to Sagunto. But luckily I had my books and knitting to keep me occupied.

* Jacque, this is probably the day that you'll recognize pictures from Barcelona.

Gira a Barcelona: Days 1 & 2

2008-01-18T16:05:00.000-06:00

A long, long time ago, the school took us on a trip ("gira" in español) to Andorra and Barcelona. Hopefully I'll be able to remember most of the details as it's about two months now since we went. Yes, I hear the complaints about my blogging skills. Maybe someday they'll be better, maybe not. The world will just have to live with me as I am. :D

Anywho, so we left on a Monday for Andorra and after about 4-5 hours in the bus, we arrived in Andorra. En route, we stopped for lunch in a small town and discovered a circus that had all of its animals staked out for the afternoon. I held on the horns of a bull! Okay, so maybe it was just a cow with horns, but I can make it sound as cool as I want right? And he was scary enough looking to call a bull, so why not?

For those who don't know, Andorra is a teeny-tiny country on the border between France and Spain. According to Wikipedia, it has the longest life-expectancy on earth, is a tax haven, and is governed by both the president of France and the bishop of Urgell, Spain, but is still technically it's own country. Regardless, it was a pretty country with "mountains" of sorts (think of mountains of a size in-between the foothills of boise and the rockies). But probably the best thing was that while we were there, the school paid for us to go to a famous spa of sorts.

Called Caldea, it was basically a bunch of different hot tubs, warm-water pools, and saunas that was extremely relaxing and fun. Except of course that I couldn't get my head wet. That kind of put a damper (ironically, lol) on things. And why couldn't I get my head wet? The same reason that I look funny in all my pictures from the trip, I still had the steri-strip/paper stitches/things on my face from the volleyball accident. Unfortunately, the trip to the ER to have them removed occurred in Barcelona AFTER we went to Andorra. And although I should have gone to the doctor sooner than Barcelona, Andorra's its own "country," which means it doesn't have the same socialist medical system that Spain does. But no worries, it didn't affect the trip that much and I was still able to enjoy all the different areas at Caldea except for the wet sauna. Just had to make sure I didn't go under water or let any of the random fountains hit me.

(Random cool horse/knight statue in Andorra)

Anywho, carrying on. We were only in Andorra for one afternoon and night and did nothing but wander around the town we were in and go to the spa. And no, I do not know the name of the town we were in, they never told us. However, in that wandering around, Sharon and I wandered into a snowboard shop so that I could drool over all the pretty equipment. They happened to have some funky mannequins with huge heads so of course we both posed with them (out of sight of the salespeople :P ).

After we decided that we had walked pretty much everywhere on the main strip, I caved to Sharon's craving and we ate supper in KFC/Pizza Hut. It was my first time actually using an American restaurant chain for something other than a potty break (Yay for McDonald's free bathrooms!). Good fast food but with the same price number as in the States, which with an exchange rate the way it is, translates to really expensive food. :( oh well. Oh and another bummer note from Andorra was that apparently we didn't walk far enough up on the main strip cause we missed seeing a yarn store. Boo! Yes, I'm a yarn nerd, and no, I don't care. :)

The next day we took off for Barcelona. On the way, we stopped at Montserrat.

This is a monastery up in the mountains that you get to via a really curvy road right on the side of a steep mountain. And I would just like to add here that I'm glad Spanish bus drivers know what they're doing. Anyway, this monastery has the first found/oldest black virgen statue there is within the Catholic church system and that's basically why the place is famous.

While there, we listened to the boys' choir, which was a bit of a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, they had great voices and it sounded really cool in the cathedral, but I was expecting a bigger choir, not just 20 or 25.

What I DID really enjoy from Montserrat was their chocolate. Apparently their monks have been making chocolate for years and they still do today. And let me tell you, their dark chocolate was GOOD. Mmmmmm.... I'm really sorry now that I didn't more bars as souvenirs for friends and family. Sorry guys!

After Montserrat, we drove and drove some more until we arrived in Barcelona. It was late afternoon and they took us to Tibidabo. This is a cathedral up on a hill that gives you an amazing view of all of Barcelona and the ocean and the hills behind. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself. As we were walking up from where the bus parked, we passed these fences that I thought were really cool. However, when I commented so, one of the guys asked what other satanic inclinations I had. Which I have no clue where that comment came from considering it's just a cool spiky fench. Who knows? You be the judge.

The cathedral itself has amazing architecture with cool arches

and nooks to hide in.

And look! There's even a bench mark for Dad.

For those curious, "Generalitat de Catalunya" is the region/province of Cataluña, kind of like a state. "Institut Cartográfic" is pretty self-explanatory and "Senyal Geodésic" means that it's a benchmarker (more or less). I don't know what exactly the numbers stand for though. Oh, and it's written in Catalán, another language that they speak in Cataluña, which is like a mix of French and Spanish.

The cathedral also has a big Jesus statue at the top, kind of like a imitation of the huge one down in Brazil.

I'm curious which one was constructed first. And speaking of Brazil, here's a random fact that I learned while here in Spain. Did you know that Brazil has the largest Adventist population of any country in the world? Quite interesting, I thought.

Back to Barcelona. Before arriving at the hotel, we stopped at the hospital ER so that I could have my steri-strips removed. Yay! Refer to previous post for more information on that adventure. After arriving at the hotel, we all had free time to go eat and roam the city at night. Kimmy and I went with Erin to try to find an instant photo booth so she could get pictures taken for a new passport (Hers had gone through the laundry AND gotten ironed so she was going to go visit the American embassy in Barcelona the next day). The first metro station we went to that the hotel worker had told us had a booth didn't have a booth so we went wandering on our own to try and find another metro station that might have one. In case you're curious, almost every airport/metro/train station in Europe has those photo booths like you see in the malls in the States. Only these booths are more for getting passport/ID photos taken than just goofy pictures with your friends. During our search, we came across a yarn store (it was closed, poo!) and the Spanish version of the Arc d'Triumph. I also was able to sample my first roasted chestnuts from a street vendor and they were quite tasty.

After getting the photos, we started searching for some place to eat. We came across this bar/cafe place that was amazing! It was 5-star service for a 1-star price. Quite the experience especially since my pear was served on a plate with a dessert fork and knife. And no it wasn't already cut into a dessert-looking serving, it was still whole. But I decided to go for the authetic experience and thus ate the pear with fork and knife. A difficult task that I challenge you to try sometime. After that restaurant, we asked the bartender for directions to a nearby grocery store. Since it was really late by then, we had to run to get there in time. But we made it and I had my first dark chocolate KitKat and it was amazing, just like everything else here.

And that's all for the first two days! More to come later...

Suiza: Part REALLY Overdue the last

2007-12-17T11:52:00.000-06:00

It's finally arrived, the end of the story of the Switzerland adventures.

Our last day in Switzerland, we got up relatively early (I don't remember the time now), broke camp, and headed for the train station. Since we had seen basically everything there was to see in Geneva, Saturday we took the train back up to Basel. On the way to Basel, we had the opportunity to actually see the Swiss countryside. When we were headed south the first day, we couldn't see anything because it was already dark. The return trip treated us to some gorgeous views. We passed through many quaint little country towns, went through gorgeous forests with flaming trees in their fall glory, and zipped past the shores of Lake Lucern. Unfortunately the pictures aren't that great because of the train windows, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was beautiful.

While on the train, the cutest little boy kept looking over at us from across the aisle and eventually Rolf broke through his shyness to come talk with us. This conversation was only possible because the cute little boy spoke English. And French. And German. AND Spanish. His Mom was Swiss and his dad was South American and he had been born in Virginia. Quite the traveler. At the end of the journey, when he, his mom, grandmother, and sister were debarking, we were all treated to kisses on our hands from Rolf, the little gentleman. This experience only served to reinforce my conviction that Americans need to get their ostrichy heads out of the sand and realize that English is NOT the only language out there. We should be teaching foreign languages to our children from a young age and teaching them that there are cultures beyond the borders of the States. I still believe that all Americans should be fluent in English and all immigrants to our country should be able to speak it, but there should be a higher concentration of foreign languages in our schools beyond just one or two, frequently badly taught, years in high school.

Moving on from my little rant, once we arrived in Basel, we decided to go see the sights, including the local cathedral and the Rhine River. En route however, Kimmy and Erin decided they were too tired to walk all over, especially while carrying their backpacks. So we parted ways, with Caroline and I continuing on and Kimmy and Erin returning to the train station to wait.

The cathedral was like most other European cathedrals, amazing. It also had a couple really cool clocks on the outside.

What was interesting about this one though was that outside a carnival was taking place. Quite the contrast to see an amusement ride set up on the cobbled streets in front of an impressive 14th century building. Caroline and I decided that the carnival must be the end of Oktoberfest since the border to Germany was just a few minutes away and it was the first weekend in November.

After the cathedral, we went on to the nearby Mittlere Rhinebrücke. This bridge is apparently the oldest bridge in Europe that spans the Rhine River.

We took pictures, crossed over, and then went down to the shore so that I could say that I had touched the Rhine River (now's the time when you "ooo" and "ahhh" :P).

We enjoyed the twilight and then made our way back to the train station to meet back up with Kimmy and Erin. On the way, we saw this apparently "famous" statue of a man hammering. I think it's supposed to represent Basel's continuous industrial nature. The man constantly moves his hammer up and down.

Once back at the train station, we sat and sat and sat and sat some more. Kind of like the little girl in the potty training book. And around 9pm when the station was really cold and questionable people were starting to move in that appeared like they too were going to spend the night there, we decided to switch locations. So we took the city bus out to the airport and set up camp there. Thankfully we were able to spend the night there without being kicked out. But let me tell you, it's a little odd spending the night in a deserted airport. The last arrival had come in at 11:30pm and the first departure in the morning wasn't till 6am. For those curious, our flight out the next morning didn't leave till 9am (check-in at 7am) and we spent the night in the airport because we're both cheap and because we hadn't arranged beforehand for a hostel and didn't want to go through the trouble later.

Anyways, back to the deserted airport. There was a security guard who walked around and the cleaning ladies were there around midnight-1am, but other than that it was deserted except for us and another group over in a different check-in area who were doing the same thing as us and sleeping there for the night.

Spending the night in an airport is not something I would recommend for anyone to do of their own volition. The chairs aren't comfortable, it's a *tad* too cold, and if you're unlucky enough, there are little kid choo-choo trains that every minute and 20 seconds begin to make noises and blink lights. Yes, we timed the possessed train; we had nothing better to do.
But we survived the night, we saved money, and we weren't late for our flight back to Valencia the next morning. And we got to mess around with stuff, such as weighing ourselves on Ryanair's luggage scales.

And thus ended the excursion to Switzerland. For those interested in traveling to Switzerland, I highly recommend it. However, keep in mind that although the dollar is more powerful than the franc (or at least it used to be), things are still expensive; you should eat regular meals; and try to find yourself a Columbian if at all possible.

That's all folks!

Suiza: Part REALLY Overdue #2

2007-12-14T16:03:00.000-06:00

Yes, Jenne, this is extremely overdue, but thankfully I don't charge myself overdue fines and neither does Blogger. :D

Day Three:

Friday was an extremely busy day. We went a bunch of places and took hundreds of pictures (that's not an exaggeration, my trip to Switzerland produced over 650 pictures). Here's the brief synopsis with fun stories thrown in here and there:

First, the reformation wall. The reformation wall depicts a bunch of the Protestant Reformers and has different quotes in different languages that have to do with the Reformation. This wall was designed by Charles Dubois, Alphonse Laverriere, Eugene Monod, and Jean Taillens, sculpted on the campus of the University of Geneva by Paul Landowski and Maurice Reymond, and finished in 1909. (how cool is that Jenne, I actually looked up my own facts!).

On our way there, we passed by the Geneva opera house, the Grand Theatre, and a park with chess sets and a cool swinging thing that I played on after all the school kids left.

Then we went to the Old Arsenal (which had cannons),

Town Hall (where Caroline scared Erin),

the Tavel house (the oldest house in Geneva, rebuilt in the 1300's after a fire destroyed it in 1334),

St. Peter's Cathedral (which we thought was a Catholic church but apparently is Protestant and has "Calvin's chair"),

the English gardens (with a cool, year-round botanical clock),

the Jet d'Eau (the world's largest fountain with a water volume of 500 L/sec to a height of 140 m at a speed of 200km/h),

the Red Cross Museum

(I went in there while Erin and Juan toured the United Nations and Kimmy and Caroline went into the Ariana Museum [ceramics]),

and then back to our campsite. Quite the day, eh?

Amusing stories:

While we were in the Tavel House, the elevator decided that it hated us. At first it didn't want to close it's doors and then when it did, it wouldn't go to the floor we wanted it to. Not only that but we had the embarrassment of always having the doors open up with the same people standing there waiting to use it but not being able to since the five of us filled it up. Grrr. Eventually though it cowed to our will and we arrived where we wanted.

When you're at the Jet d'Eau, there's a little pier that goes out past it that you can walk on. Depending on the day and the direction of the wind, you can either remain perfectly dry or you can get soaked.

Thankfully we had good luck and were able to make it out and back fairly dry. On the way Juan told us the following story: Apparently a man decided that he wanted to go out with a bang. So one morning before the Jet d'Eau was turned on (it's turned off every night, some nights earlier than others), he went out on the pier and stood on the fountain. With the aforementioned qualities of this particular fountain, you can imagine what happened to him when the force of the water connected with his body. He died, of course.

Before we went out to the fountain, we stopped to feed the swans and ducks crackers. Let me tell you, those buggers are persistent and will try nibbling your shoe if it looks tasty. Also, they're not afraid of catching your fingers in their beaks as they go for the food. And a swan's beak hurts more that it looks like it would.

After the fountain, we had our little PMS incident. All of us were really hungry but we couldn't decide what to eat and everything just kept looking really expensive. Finally Kimmy had to tell Erin to chill out and then told Juan that we were stopping at the next sandwich place we saw. This plan had an upside and a downside. The good part was it served really good panini. The bad part was that I ended up paying 8 francs for a sandwich and 3 francs for a bottle of water that was bottled just on the other side of the lake (for those that don't know, Evian water is bottled on Lake Geneva). After that I left the group for a little while to go on a yarn store hunt. Fortunately, I found the address that I had written down from my web search. Unfortunately, the web does NOT know all, and it wasn't a yarn store like it said. So instead I spent my pennies on chocolate bonbons in an attempt to consol myself (since it was really good and I was able to buy yarn at a different store, my efforts worked).

The Red Cross/Red Crescent Museum was pretty cool. Small, but interesting. One aspect that I liked was it had all the files of the WWII POWs displayed. I was able to find one of our ancestor's last names listed, although I have no clue if we're related or not. Kinda cool to think we are.

Another aspect I really liked, but hadn't thought about much was the emphasis the Red Cross puts on the work to eliminate land mine use. Here's one of the posters they had displayed that I thought packed a punch, to borrow the colloquialism.

After the Red Cross Museum, we had a little "situation." We were all supposed to meet up again on a particular street corner after our different expeditions to different places. Side note for those wondering: I didn't go into the UN because it cost a little too much for me and I figured a picture out front was good enough. Anywho, I came out of the Red Cross Museum and met up with Kimmy and Caroline who were waiting where they were supposed to be. Since Juan and Erin hadn't shown up yet, I told them I was going to go browse through the ceramics museum really quick since it was a free museum. While I was in there I found a monkey for Jacque.
After I came out, Erin and Juan still weren't there so I joined Kimmy and Caroline on the bench and we proceeded to wait. Ten, twenty, thirty minutes went by and no Erin and no Juan. At first we were just frustrated but then as time continued to pass, we began to get nervous. Had something happened? Was Juan really the nice guy we thought he was? Had they gone somewhere else and not told us? We ended up waiting an hour before we went back down to the tram stop to look for them. Once there, we waited for ten minutes before returning to the original meeting place. We decided we would wait another 45 minutes before returning to Juan's house and seeing if his dad was there and if he could call Juan's cell and find out what was going on. If his dad wasn't there, we were going to wait till he came home and then if calling Juan didn't work, we would call the police and REALLY start to worry. Thankfully none of this came to pass. Ten minutes before we would have left, they showed up. What had happened was they joined the last tour of the day and then other tourists kept not following directions or asking stupid questions and the tour went a LOT longer than it was supposed to. But it all turned out okay in the end and since it wasn't their fault they were late, we forgave Juan and Erin. Then we made our merry little way back to the campsite where we parted ways and Erin and Kimmy spent the night in the bathroom as Caroline and I "snuggled" in the tent in our sleeping bags.

Yay for pretty Geneva avenues!

Suiza: Part REALLY Overdue #1 . . .

2007-12-10T06:15:00.000-06:00

For those of you who have been patiently waiting, here’s more of the details of our adventure in Switzerland.

Day One:

We flew Ryanair from Valencia to Basel, Switzerland. Ryanair, for those who have never experienced it, is an interesting airline. Its colors are blue and yellow and the backs of all the seats in the airplane are hard yellow plastic. Almost enough to give you a headache during the trip. Also, the poor flight attendants have to wear these hideous bright royal blue suits. Sorry there's no picture. I'll try to get one when I fly to Italy (didn't get one going to Paris either).

None of the refreshments on board are free, you have to pay for EVERYTHING, a little disappointing I must say. Also, they’ll sell you lottery tickets on board. Definitely a new experience. Thankfully it wasn’t cloudy while we were flying and that allowed us to view the amazing European alps from the air.

So gorgeous!! The pictures don’t do them justice.

And although the airline seems a little sketchy, cheap as it is and all, we had a safe departure, flight, and landing into Basel, Switzerland.

The interesting thing about the Basel airport is that it’s actually located on the border of three countries.

Depending on which door you exit through, you can go to France, Germany, or Switzerland. Obviously since we were headed to Geneva, we took the option for Switzerland. We took the bus into the train station and there we encountered our first problem.

We found a bank and proceeded to withdraw money in Swiss francs (luckily for us, Switzerland is actually a country whose money is LESS powerful than the US: 80 cents USD = 1 franc CHF). However, when it came Carolyn’s turn, she could remember which password was for her bank card. After several wrong tries, the ATM spit out her card, locking it, of course. Thus she had no way to buy a train ticket. We tried calling her bank back in the US through COLLECT but it didn’t work. Finally I loaned her one lump sum of money for the weekend and we continued on our way. We bought bread and cheese at a grocery store and then proceeded to wait for our train.

We made it safely onto the correct train and settled down for a three-hour trip. A couple panic situations occurred as we wondered alternatively whether we were on the right train after all, or whether we needed to switch trains. Thankfully no further action was required on our part and we arrived safely in Geneva. In the train station we located a bus route map and then successfully made it to the stop. Now in Switzerland, you buy your bus tickets on the street at whatever stop you’re getting on and the amount you pay depends on how far you’re riding the bus or how long you want a pass for (a couple hours, all-day, etc). Since we had no clue where exactly the campground was, or how many zones we would be traveling through, we stood like idiots in front of the board trying to decide. Finally a nice black gentleman who spoke English was able to help us a little and we bought tickets to get on the bus.

And you know the rest of that story.

Later we found out from Juan that we had bought more than we needed to for those first tickets. And he also told us where to go to get our change for the tickets. The stop didn’t give change and none of us had had the correct change so we all had overpaid. So at the end of our trip we were able to get our refunds. Yay for that.

And afternoon, evening, and late-night were the first day in Switzerland.

Day Two:

This was the day where we kind of just wandered around and didn’t really have a specific agenda in mind. First, on our way into Geneva, we walked through the village of Vernier (where Juan lives) and experienced a quaint little Swiss village.

We went by the town hall where we all saw our first normal-looking door that was actually was an automatic door.

It scared us when it first opened and then after we realized what it was and want to get a video of it opening, it wouldn’t open. Argg. Pero no pasa nada. We walked through a park surrounding town hall and I found a perfect pile of leaves to jump in.

That was one of the great things about this trip. It was fall and all the leaves were changing colors and it was gorgeous and there were piles everywhere for me to jump in.

By the time we actually got into actual Geneva, we first stopped at tourist information and then the post office (Mom and Dad, did you ever get that postcard?) .

Then we took the tram up to the European headquarters for the United Nations. We saw and took pictures of the Broken Chair (a monument to land-mine victims)

and took pictures in front of the entrance (I'm pointing to the approximate location of Idaho),
and then walked down to the free Botanical Gardens of Geneva. Which happened to be right across from the World Meteorological Organization, which is housed in a really cool building with lots of windows that looks like a submarine. So we took more pictures of that.

The botanical gardens were really pretty, even though it was fall, and we took lots of pics. Even got someone to take a picture of all five of us (remember to cheer for Juan!).

Then we managed to find another pile of leaves for me to jump in. This time Erin joined me and we got some cool action shots.

Oh and the Botanical Gardens also had one of the first bathrooms I've been in (outside of arcade places like Boondocks) that had blacklights in the bathroom. Or maybe they were just blue lights. Either way I took a picture of course.

Then we wandered our way back into the main part of Geneva in search of food. On the way, we saw a really cool, modernized Catholic church with a spherical-shaped sanctuary.

We ended up in a super-department store called Manor (Jacque, it was a lot like El Corte Ingles). They had a restaurant/cafeteria up on the top floor and we ate pizza for supper. Then we took the bus back to our campground and crashed for the night.

By the way, let me tell you how the camping went. The first night at Juan’s house was just fine. Everyone was warm enough and we slept decently for being on the ground without any padding under our bags. The second night (at the campground) was a different story.

Since we really hadn’t eaten much during the day, I don’t think our bodies really had enough energy to keep up warm during the night. We all slept horribly till about 3am when we all realized that yes, we were all awake, and yes, we were all hungry, and why not have a little snack? So we did and after that we seemed to sleep a little better. The third night, Kimmy and Erin decided that they weren’t going to deal with the cold for another night and they took their sleeping bags to the campground’s heated bathrooms and slept there. I opted to stay in the tent since my sleeping bag was actually a decent one and I really wasn’t that cold at night. Yes, my hips (where I had the most pressure and contact with the ground) and my toes were a little chilly, but nothing a Giem can’t handle. There’s been worse I know. The next morning we had frost but we’re still all alive and kicking.

Eye Update

2007-12-10T06:04:00.000-06:00

Woohoo! Look, look! It's another post by Joni! ¡Que guay! Yeah, sorry about the absence.

So for those wondering about my health, my eye has managed to heal quite nicely. While we were in Barcelona, we went in for a quite expensive (think 130€ -ish) ER visit. The nice doctor took off the stitches, informing me that in Spain they're known as "puntos americanos," swabbed the area with iodine, wrote a prescription, and informed me that i was good to go.

The iodine's the main reason that my eye looks so pretty in these pics. And yes Spain is still addicted to iodine for just about every injury. They haven't quite gotten to the antibiotic cream yet.

And a week or so later, my eye looked like this.

Currently you can't see the scar unless you look for it, but it still hurts just a teeny, tiny bit if you press on it. No complaints from this side of town.

Suiza: In which we do things our parents have always told us NOT to do

2007-11-12T06:02:00.000-06:00

Story Time!!!

"It was a dark, cold Swiss night. On a warm, brightly lit commuter bus, four foreigners chat as old friends, oblivious to the fact that the bus nears the end of the line. The bus stops like normal, but all of a sudden, the engine turns off. Startled, the four girls look at each other questioningly. As they start to gather their things to leave, a stranger waiting for them to move out of his path casually mentions in English, "You know this is the end of the line, right?" Feigning an informed attitude, the girls nod and proceed to exit the bus. Outside the doors, they face a dark sidewalk lined by a chain fence that disappears into the distance. Every hundred yards streetlights try to illuminate the darkness but their feeble attempts are swallowed almost immediately by the intense blackhole of nighttime. The thought that it's Halloween offers no comfort.

The bewildered girls glance around, trying desperately to spot something that resembles another bus stop for their connecting bus. The stranger from the bus appears at their elbow once more and asks if they need help. Since there's no one else around and he speaks English, they decide to take a chance. They state that they're looking for the stop for the 54 bus. He guides them to the nearby information board for the stop. Here they realize a deadly mistake--the 54 ran its last route nearly an hour and a half before. In an attempt to help, the stranger goes to the bus' still-open doors and asks about the 54. He confirms that no, it's not coming again tonight, then returns to ask the girls where they're headed. They take another chance and mention that they were headed to a campground and ask if he knows how far away it is. Luckily, he does know of the campground. Unluckily, he states that he thinks it's a 30-minute walk. Once again the girls look down the long, dark road and ponder their fate. The stranger says that he's headed in the same direction for the first part and why don't they start walking in order to get warmer? As they start off, each girl begins to wonder just how safe the Swiss countryside is.

At this point, the stranger asks if they would like a ride down to the campground rather than walking. Immediately thinking of what their parents have always told them about not getting in cars with strangers, the girls hemhaw and don't really respond. The stranger then says that he has to call home and see if his dad has even arrived home yet and if the car is even available to use. At the mention of a father, the girls begin to feel a bit more comfortable with the idea. They stop at the corner while the stranger pulls out his cell and calls. This produces the pleasant surprise that this stranger is trilingual and also speaks Spanish, for he speaks Spanish with his father. Even though they still don't know much about the stranger, for some reason Spanish makes them a million times more comfortable for it is a language they somewhat understand, as opposed to the german and french they had been hearing all day long. The stranger ends his call and informs the girls that yes, his papi is home, and yes they can use the car, and would they like to walk to his house? Taking a huge risk but leaning on the hope that if there's a papi the situation is safe, they agree. At this point, several prospective headlines run through one girl's head: "Four American Girls Disappear in Geneva" "Vacation Turns Nightmarish for Americans" "Swiss Kidnapping Ring Strikes Again."

After a five-minute walk, they arrive at the house and are warmly welcomed in by the father. Introductions are made, backpacks are taken off, and refreshments are offered. During the course of the friendly conversation in the homey atmosphere, they learn that Nelson, the father, works for the UN. Juan, his son the stranger, has just graduated from an university in Ottowa, Canada and is bumming around at home in Geneva.

Isn't that a great story? But wait there's more. We stayed at Juan's house for a good hour and a half just talking. Then we decided that we really should drive down to the campground and see if it's office was open. When Erin had been researching it online, it said it was open year-round but it didn't have office hours. Since it was almost 10pm and apparently everything in Switzerland closes at 10pm, as opposed to Spain where everything OPENS at 9pm, Nelson offered his "garden" to us incase the office wasn't open. Which it wasn't. So we drove back with Juan and set up camp in his backyard. We slept fairly well that night and then in the morning, had tea with him again (his dad had already left for work). Then we all walked down to the campground (it was 30 min from there) and he helped us talk with the office manager and pay for our campsite for two nights. It was a good thing he was there or else we would have paid almost double because of a misunderstanding. Not only did he help us with that, but he also walked around Geneva with us for two days and was our own personal tour guide and put up with some pretty snippy attitudes at times (let's just say it wasn't the greatest time of the month for four girls to be traveling together).

Basically God was watching out for us and put Juan in our path at just the right time. I have no idea what we would have done if he hadn't been on that bus. As Caroline said, after the trip, "Then God said, 'Let there be Juan.'"

Yay for nice Columbians!!!

More to come on the Switzerland trip later.

Volleyball and the Spanish ER

2007-11-11T15:41:00.000-06:00

What better fun is to be had than a 10pm visit to the local ER on a Sunday evening? Yep, that's right, I have now had my first official experience with Spanish medicine. But let's not get ahead of the story.

Last night was the start of the CAS Olimpiadas. Basically, the school is going to have an all-year competition in different sports. Each area of the school (theo dept, ESDES, the high-school, the taskforce, local college kids, etc) gets to form two co-ed teams of ten players. Once a month, all the teams will have a one-night tournament in a certain sport. Sports to be played include vball, bball, soccer, football, running, cycling, possibly more, I don't know.

Regardless, last night was the first night and they decided to start with the best sport possible: volleyball. Woot woot! Needless to say, I was excited. It started at 8pm with a worship talk and then all the teams started warming up. After we found out that our team wasn't playing right away, we moved off to the side. However, one of the girls helping run the tournament came and asked Kimmy and I if we wanted to play with one of the highschool teams. They had only one girl and needed more. We agreed, thinking it would be a good warm-up for our actual game. For me, it turned out to be all the volleyball I would play for the entire night.

The first game of the match went relatively well. Only I played, Kimmy was going to switch with me for the second game of the match. Neither team was that great; it was like a junior high game. Our team lost, but it was no sweat off my back cause it wasn't really my team. Horrible of me, I know. Anyway, so we switched sides and then they decided that they wanted three girls on the court so Kimmy jumped in. But then one of the boys was upset cause there was no room for him and he would have to sub in. So the one girl that was SUPPOSED to be on the team left the court. Which made me feel bad but I didn't know the right words to tell her to come play for me. I guess if I had tried a little harder I could have gotten the point across and then life would have been better for all involved.

Anyway, so we're a couple points into the second game, and I'm up playing front left. A ball comes my way from the back and I jump up to hit it. And it would have been a decent hit too, except that one of the boys who was playing middle decided that he needed to go for the ball too. This meant only one thing, that we collided in the air, with his elbow or hand or head or shoulder or SOMETHING connecting forcefully with the right side of my glasses (why was I wearing glasses to play volleyball? because I had worn them before to play and nothing bad had happened. lesson learned: change to contacts when you actually do think about it before going up to the gym for volleyball). My instincts kicked in and my glasses were off my face and in my right hand before I even realized that my right eye was hurting. When I did feel the pain, a split second later, I put my other hand up to my face like anyone else would. That was the point where I started to freak because even without my glasses on, I could see blood dripping from my face down to my hand. And where the eye is concerned, blood is NOT a good thing. I immediately began thinking of things like cut corneas and blindness and it wasn't too happy.

So of course I left the court and at first was just standing there wondering who I should talk to, where I should go, what I should do. One of the other players from the other team that I'd played volleyball before on weeknights took me to the bathroom and told me to wash my face and the injury with water. Which I did until I was told to go to the athletic department. Luckily, a couple different nurses were in the gym that night and so they took care of me, giving me gauze and wiping my face with iodine and telling me that I had just won a free trip to the ER.

Oh, I haven't said yet, I was extremely lucky, and my glasses only cut the skin above and below my eye. My eye and eyelid were perfectly fine. But since the cut below was just big enough, one of the nurses told me that it would be best to go to the ER and get stitches since it would heal faster. I'm also assuming that I'll have a smaller scar.

Maite, one of the assistant deans, and Rita, theo major I think, drove me down to the dorm where I grabbed my passport and my camera. Then it was off to the hospital.

Although I was a little worried about Spanish medicine and getting stitches (considering I've got a pretty ugly scar on my back from a botched stitching job), the experience on a whole was fairly decent and actually the quickest ER service I've ever had. We didn't even wait for more than 2 or 3 minutes. The two doctors conferred and decided that I didn't need actual stitches, mainly because it was fairly small and it was in a difficult position to stitch anyways. Which made me extremely happy because the thought of a numbing shot in my face did NOT excite me.

The doctor cleaned and disinfected both cuts and then put these sticky strip thingies on the bottom cut to hold it together. Throughout the whole process, he was asking questions or making comments in Spanish. For the most part, I kept on having to look in confusion at Maite and Rita. Maite, who doesn't speak English, would repeat it in slower or simpler Spanish and I would either understand or not. If not, I would then look at Rita for English, since she speaks pretty decent English. As he was putting on the strips, he kept asking "te molesta?" which for those of you who don't speak Spanish, means "is it bothering you?" And I kept replying no and that it was all good. Which it was. Thankfully the cut really didn't hurt at all. What DID hurt and what made me reply "si" to the "te molesta?" question was when they put a square of stuff over the strips to help keep them in place. I think it's a square of the stuff they use to make casts. It looks like gauze but it's stiff and stuck to my face without tape or anything on top. That stuff was the only thing in the whole night that actually made me cry. And of course the doctor told me to stop crying because the wetness wasn't good for the bandage. Then he gave me a ghetto cold pack to hold to my eye. This cold pack consisted of two ice cubes in a tied surgical glove wrapped in gauze. Yeah.

After he was done doctoring me up and the other doctor had come and told him "good work," it was on to the instructions part. Instructions like "don't get it wet" and "try not to stretch that part of your face" and "come back tuesday so we can check it and make sure the cut isn't pulling apart." This is the most ironic part of the whole deal. Tuesday, we (ESDES) are leaving for a cultural tour to Barcelona until Friday. And we're leaving at 7:45am. Which means that I obviously can't go back for a checkup. Upon hearing this news, the doctor then told Maite that I need to go to a hospital in Barcelona. What fun! Especially since the professor that's directing this tour is Luis Amoros, who, of course, is one of the few professors who doesn't speak English. Which should make for a fun time all-around if they need any specific information from me or need to tell me any specific instructions. Hopefully nothing gets lost in translation.

And that's all folks! Please pray that I heal quickly and neatly and the scar's not too bad. Here's a day after pic:

Zaragoza Part Three: Ofrenda de Flores

2007-11-04T09:19:00.000-06:00

Okay, so remember a long time ago when I mentioned a festival in Zaragoza that culminated on the last day that we were there? The one called "Pilar" with the "Ofrenda de Flores"? Yeah, I almost didn't remember either. Don't feel bad.

Anywho, not only was Oct 12 the day for the Ofrenda de Flores, it was also "Dia de la Hispanidad," which is basically Spain's national holiday. So you get the picture that it was a pretty big deal.

Starting at about 7:30am (possibly earlier), all the Spaniards start bringing flowers to this empty structure in the Plaza Mayor directly infront of the basilica.

By about 11:30, it looked like this:

And then by 3:45ish when we left, it looked like this:

And many, MANY more people were still in line bringing their flowers. Even though Spain is a Catholic country and most people when asked will respond that, yes, they are Catholic, many of them aren't practicing Catholics. Until it comes to festivals like this. Then they're all about dressing up and bringing the right flowers and getting the best blessing.

If you brought gladiolas, the white flowers, and the helpers placed them at the top, supposedly you received a higher blessing than if you brought carnations for the lower part of the structure. Oh, and if you're curious, all of the flowers are supposed to form the skirt of the Virgin Mary who's up at the top. I got the impression that you couldn't be in the procession to give flowers unless you were all dressed up in the classic peasant attire of whatever century they were representing (sorry for the lack of detail). I love their costumes and someday I'm going to make myself stockings like these:

Throughout the day, different represetative groups from different parts of Spain had little "performances" that they did while in the line that went through probably half the city. Also, there were your normal street performers,

and many many cute little kids in costumes.

Probably the oddest thing I saw was a group of bagpipers. Aren't bagpipes from Scotland?

They also had a stage set up in front of the offering structure (I'm still not sure what to call it. Monument? Altar? Structure? Virgin's skirt? What would you call it?) where different dancing groups or choirs performed. Also, every once in awhile, the Spanish air force would fly overhead and make lots of fun noise.

The many problem that I had with the billions of people and crowds, etc was that more Spaniards need to learn what deoderant is. Nasty nasty smelling.

And the trip ended for us around 4pm when we loaded the bus and drove back to Sagunto. On the way, we stopped at a truck stop again and I will leave you with this amusing shirt that caught my eye. You want a shirt like this too, don't you? lol

Zaragoza! Part Two: Catedral, Basilica, y Castillo

2007-10-25T05:40:00.000-05:00

The first night that we were in Zaragoza (Wed, Oct 10), after checking into the "four-star" hotel, we had time to roam the streets and experience an evening in the city. I put four-star in quotations because that's what they said they were. But if it was a true four-star, then there's a HUGE jump between four and five stars. Either that or Europe has a different scale than the US cause the five-star I went to in Sun Valley was WAY nicer than what we stayed in. Don't get me wrong, it was nice, but I was expecting nicer. But whatever.

That first night, I went out with Sharon, Kimberly, Caroline, and Erin in search of shoes for Sharon (her flipflops had broken) and food for all of us. As we were looking for shoes (speaking of which, Spain does not have flipflops ANYWHERE. and crocs are really expensive: 25 euro which is about $40 US. crazy), I managed to separate myself from both Sharon and the others. Sharon had gone ahead to another store. I went to go find her while the others waited. I couldn't find her and when I got back, the others had disappeared. But no pasa nada. I just wandered around the street vendors by myself for awhile looking for them and then when I had decided to go get some food on my own, I ran into some other girls from the school. So all ended well. And I learned that I have absolutely no problem being by myself in the city. Probably not the safest, but oh well.

After supper (Greek gyros, yummy), I went back to the hotel and found Erin and Kimberly. We decided to go out again and wander some more. We ended up at a street concert of some "old" Spanish contemporary group. Basically, the kind of group that used to be cool back in the day, but now is only listened to by the parents.

We crowd-wove our way to the very front, had our ears blasted out for a few minutes and then went back to the hotel around 11:30pm.

Intending to not be tired the next day, I went to bed soon after. But my efforts to sleep all the way till breakfast (9am) were thwarted by the marching band that decided to go marching by at 7:00am right outside our window. Grrr. And they ended up doing it again the next morning too. Silly Spaniards.

Oh, at this point I should probably explain why so much was going on. We were in Zaragoza during the festival "Pilar." Basically, it is celebrating the supposed visit of the Virgen Mary to St. James back in the first century. Legend says that she gave a pillar to build a church upon. Today this same "pillar" is inside the Basilica of Zaragoza and you can stand in line to kiss the back of it.
Or if you're still young enough, you can stand in line and pay to have your picture taken in front of it.

On Thursday, we started the morning off by going to a museum of the Roman foro that used to be in Zaragoza back when the city was called "Caesaraugusta" (it was actually the only city in Europe directly named after the emperor).

Then we went to La Seo, a cathedral right next to the foro museum. More pretty architecture here along with a magnificent organ that I would love to play someday along with mom.

You weren't supposed to take pictures, but I turned my flash off and did anyways. Shame on me.

The cathedral was built first by the Christians and then the Moors added some more on and then it was Catholic again....I think. Anyway, it has both Christian and Moorish aspects to it.

After the cathedral, it was time to go to the Basilica.

Another gorgeous building, but this one also had a tower. Unlike the tower in Valencia, this one had an elevator halfway up and then stairs the rest of the way.

So it wasn't as bad of a hike to the top and the magnificent views of the city, including the Rio Ebro.

Next, we all had free time to both go eat lunch and then walk around and shop or take siesta or whatever. While we were walking the streets we saw this hilarious street performer. He would remain absolutely still except for his face where he had some of the weirdest/hilarious expressions. And if you wanted you could have your picture with him. When you gave him change, he would then bop you on the head with a stuffed mallet that he was hiding under his floppy violin. Quite entertaining. Especially watching little kids trying to toss coins in his jar without getting bopped on the head.

We met up again at 4:30pm to go to Aljaferia, an arabic castle that now also holds the "Cortes de Aragon" (the local legislature).

This castle was super cool and made me feel like I was in the middle of "Arabian Nights."

Arabic architecture is so neat and I think I like it better than neoclassic or romantic or gothic. There's just something about the way the arabs formed their arches.

We went on an actual guided tour here rather than just having our professor Ana Fernandez explain everything to us like she had earlier that day. Our guide took us through both the ancient palace and the current modern governmental section.

One funny part to this visit was that to enter the castle, you have to go through security with a metal detector and everything. Since we thought we were just visiting an ancient castle we were all confused. Were they afraid some Islam radical still mad at the Christians for winning would come by and bomb the national monument? But then we went into the government section and everything made sense. Silly Americans.

Once again, after we got back to the hotel, we had more free time. Katie, Carolyn and I ended up going to see the "jotas," traditional peasant dances. The dancers, musicians, and singers were all fantastic and I love castanets! It's a bit blurry cause the guy in front of me kept moving his head, but here's a short video if you so desire.

Then we wandered around some more, went into some candy stores, decided I needed something better than gummies in the shape of a fried egg,

bought four bonbons for 2.50 euro that were definitely worth it (sorry, no picture), took pics of buildings at night,

including a Christmas building,

went down to another concert (better than last time but still too loud and too late), and then went to bed to get ready for the main event the next day: La Ofrenda de Flores.

Zaragoza! Part One: Monasterio de Piedra

2007-10-24T14:54:00.001-05:00

October 10-12 we went as a school to visit Zaragoza. It's located roughly in north-central Spain (I think...correct me if I'm wrong, Little Miss Information Jennifer :P) However, before we actually got to the city, we stopped for several hours at the Monasterio de Piedra. This place was absolutely gorgeous!! Originally a castle for the Moors, it then was changed into a monastery that made vine (yeah, figure that one out) and also, was the first place that chocolate was processed in Spain way back when (mmmm....chocolate). Speaking of chocolate, at a truck stop on the way there, I saw a bar of Lindt chocolate that was 99% cacao. And I would have boughten it if it hadn't been so darn expensive and if I hadn't been on my way to a festival. Back to the monastery. Surrounding the monastery is a park that has waterfalls galore. It was simply amazing. And since I can't really describe it's beauty, I'll give you some pictures so you can get an idea of what it looked like (like always, for more pics, go to picasaweb.google.com/dodobanana). Breathtaking huh? It was also cool how they had the path system set up. You wandered your way through the park climbing up to the top of waterfalls and going down through tunnels and over bridges and through Lothlorien-like woods (appropriate since it's in the Aragon region) and I loved it. The only problem was I almost died on these slippery stairs. The park also has a fish hatchery that it looks like it is used similarly to the MK Nature Center in Boise. And being the naughty college students that we are, Sharon and I followed Adelin through a gate in the fence and pet the fish. While the gate wasn't locked, the fence was definitely there to keep visitors out. Oops. :P Since we were busy playing with the fish and trying to feed them crackers and bread, we ended up being late for the tour through the monastery itself and almost got left behind. But thanks to some fast walking, we were only a little late and we ended up not being the only ones late either. The monastery was almost as cool as the park. Parts of it the owners (the monastery's owned by a private family) were letting disintegrate as nature took its course. Or at least that's what I'm assuming was happening. Other parts had been restored and turned into a museum for the wine production that used to take place there. I've said it before but I'll say it again. I love the ancient architecture of Europe!!! It's so freaking cool! I could take a million pictures of arches and columns and soaring ceilings. Muy guay. Oh and here's a pic of me with a possible relative: Christy Fenton. Do you have any clue, Mom if Grandpa had any relatives (like brothers of his dad?) who ended up in New Jersey?

Valencia

2007-10-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

Monday, October 8, the school took us to Valencia. Thirty minutes from the school, Valencia is Spain's largest city. Just how many people that actually is, I have no idea. Go google it if you really feel the need to know; I'm feeling lazy right now. :) In fact, you're lucky enough just to be getting this post two weeks after the event. Lame, I know.

Anywho, on to the actual details of the event. We left around 9:30 in the morning, got there at ten, and proceeded to have a bus tour of the city. Mainly our professor Ana was just pointing out different commercial sections of the city, neat buildings built in modern styles, the plaza de toros, and different monuments.

Plaza de Toros:

After we got off the bus, we walked a little ways through the downtown area to the city's cathedral. Like most old architecture in Europe, the cathedral was beautiful!

We walked around it first to look at the different sides that were in different architectural styles (gothic, baroque, and romantic for those who really want to know). While we were looking at the romantic doorway (which was enormous with a smaller pair of doors cut out of the bigger ones that I know I wouldn't want to have to open), we saw two files of nuns come around the corner and enter the building. It was amusing to watch about 90% of the ACA group oggle the nuns and say things like "It's Sister Act Valencia" or "Wow! Real, live nuns!" Yeah, a little pathetic yet still amusing. Here's a model of the cathedral so you can get a feel for what it was like.

After that we went inside the cathedral and up the "Torre de Micalet," a tower named for Michael the archangel, I believe. And boy was it a hike up. A total of 206 steps, if this math major can still count.

But the view from the top was definitely worth it.

And as an added bonus, it turned twelve noon while we were up there and we had the privilege of having our ears blasted out as the bell sounded twelve times.

After we left the tower and the cathedral (ooo, sidenote: supposedly one of the possible "Holy Grails" is in this cathedral. Nifty, huh?), we went walking around the city again. We would have gone in another museum but since it was a festival week, the museum was closed. However, we did go through an "ancient" market and saw some other cool architecture and fountains. Yay!

Then it was free time for us to go shopping (Woohoo. Can't you just hear the dripping sarcasm?). After walking around for a suitable place to eat lunch, we ended up on the closed museum's steps. After that, we went through the open air market and then went for ice cream. On the way, we saw the post office and had to stop to take pictures. If only all post offices in the US were this pretty and orderly inside.

After ice cream (mmm, mmm good), we went shopping. Boo!!! Oh well, I survived and was intrigued at the current fashion/prices in Spain. When we finally stopped and made it back to the park near this arch/monument/thing where we were meeting to go back to school, it was time for me to take a snooze in the somewhat green grass (no, not the grass next to the arch. I only wish)

Speaking of which, I'd have to say that's one of the things of my top things I miss about Union. Green grass that I can sit on to do homework. Honestly, there is no good grass on this campus except for in front of the boy's dorm/church and the soccer field (of course). And I'm not about to go sit down in front of the boy's dorm to do my homework on a regular basis. Poo.

Sagunto Festival

2007-10-14T09:36:00.000-05:00

october 6-9 was the festival de moros y cristianos here in sagunto. the festival started out with a 2-3 hour parade that had just about every kind of sparkly muslimish or spanish costume that you could dream of. also, there were horses (yay!) and bands and drums and it was very very cool all in all.

spanish prince and princess of some sort

all up and down the parade route there were these lights hanging above the streets. the red crosses were for "los cristianos" and the green moons were for "los moros"

basically, this festival was commorating the conflict between Jaime I (first king of spain) and the moors as both tried to occupy the castle of sagunto and the surrounding areas.

at times when we were bored with watching the parade and were content to just listen to the stellar music, we entertained ourselves by taking random pictures of each other. after a bunch of the ACA students that i had walked down with decided to go find a better place to watch the parade from, i ended up hanging out with several of the theology students. pictured below are adelin, emanuel, and cristian (not pictured are claudia and john).

after the tail end of the parade passed us, we trailed them in the streets marching along to the music and generally goofing off. at the end of the parade route they had a raised platform where all the "royalty" who were in the parade were seated. when we got there, everything was breaking up and we were able to get pictures with random parade people. here i am wearing and amazingly cool hat/turbin/thing. one thing that i've really like about the spanairds so far is that they all seem to be really nice. no complaints or rolled eyes or anything when barraged by many americans wanting pictures with them.

while we had been marching down the street my group had been joined by pretty much the rest of CAS that was down at the parade. when we were done with parade people pics, my original group plus erin, kim, and txe txu (pronounced "cheh-choo") decided to go get something to eat. so we headed back down the same street, being loud and kicking empty pop cans like soccer balls. after much deliberation and indecisiveness and sidetracking, we ended up at a kebab place. there we joked and goofed off more as some of the guys had sandwiches, claudia bought us all ice cream sandwiches, and txe txu made the girls napkin roses.

since it was getting late and the girls' dorm closes with locked doors at midnight, we decided we needed to head back. but not before making fools of ourselves in the streets again. txe txu took us on the ride of our lives as he tried to get back to the school in 4 minutes to beat curfew. which he did; we arrived at the dorm at 11:59 pm.

the next day, kim and i decided to walk into sagunto again for the next part of the festival. our professors had told us that there would be something up at the castle the next morning at 11am. like good little adventists, we didn't end up leaving the school till 10:50 and so when we got to the castle at 11:30 and nothing was going on, we were a little confused. we then decided to go to the far side of the castle that we hadn't made it to when we came with the school and take more pics. which we did until we heard the sounds of a band and rifles coming up the street towards the castle. so we hadn't missed it, it was just at noon, not 11. it was a mini-parade of the people from the night before and since it was daytime i got better pics of the pretty costumes, although i felt really bad for the people who were wearing them cause it was about 80 degrees out and i was boiling in a tanktop and shorts.

they all paraded up to the front of one of the arches of the castle and proceeded to have an argument (with mics) between the moor king and jaime I of spain. and i understood about 10% of the speeches; mainly that both sides thought they had divine right to rule in the area, both insulted the other's god and that it would be battle to the death. while standing around, i caught a glimpse of this dad and son who were dressed up and had to take a pic. awwwww.

and here's a picture of the rifle corps who delighted in shooting off their blank rounds at random times and during supposed "battles" and scaring the crowd. even when i knew they were going to shoot, i still jumped like crazy every time.

at the very end of the speeches, the two kings came down and had a "duel to the death." jaime I beat the moor and everyone cheered and then it was all over.

after much wishy-washyness, i finally overcame my shyness and went and asked the spanish prince dude if i could have my picture taken with him. which obviously i did, and even though neither of us really look that good, i can still say that i "found" my spanish prince. ha!

after that, kim and i and adam (we found him up at the castle), went down the street and meandered through the medieval market. since it was the first day, some people were still setting up and it wasn't really that great. which was a real bummer in the end cause it caused us to not come down on tuesday for "dia de valencia," the real festival day cause we thought it would be the same. which other people told us it wasn't; we missed street performers and more music and other stuff. boo!

for lunch we ended up having a spinach pastry thing and candy....way too much candy. but it looked good and it tasted good and we had been walking all morning so why not? anywho, here's a pic of a pear gummy candy thing that was amazing.

and that's the end of the sagunto festival. and i've decided that i'm going to stop promising to post events on time cause apparently it will never happen. but eventually, there will be an update of this week's trip to a monastery and zaragoza.

Campamento to Alcossebre

2007-10-07T15:23:00.000-05:00

the second weekend that we were here, the school had a "university" campout in alcossebre, a little touristy town about an hour and a half north of sagunto. by "university," i mean that the 17- and 18-year-olds from CAS, the theo students, the ESDES students, and college-aged students from the community could come. we left friday afternoon and came back sunday afternoon. the camp is kinda like a summer camp here. or maybe more like a place that they can have a campmeeting. there were triplex cabins (w/o electricity), a big picnic shelter, washhouse, showers, toilet building, and kitchen. there was possibly more to the camp but i didn't really see it. the toilets were amusingly atiquidated and although they were pretty sanitary when compared to an outhouse i saw in new mexico once, some of the girls actually refused to use them and went almost 3 days without using the restroom. crazy!

friday was pretty relaxed. we didn't do much but go to the beach (30 sec walk from the cabins - woot!), throw a frisbee around and take pics. we had vespers and afterglow that night which were pretty good. thankfully for worships for the two weeks that we were here they've had one of the theo students who's from minnesota translate for us.

that night there was an almost-full moon (full moon was wed) and it was gorgeous going up over the ocean. tried to get some pics but they didn't turn out too well. oh well. at least i tried.

the next day, erin, caroline, kim, and i decided that we didn't need to fall asleep to the lull of uncomprehensible spanish during sabbath school so we skipped and instead went walking down the beach taking pics and collecting sea shells. we came back for church (which was translated unlike sabbath school) and afterwards had lunch. after lunch, i went walking along the beach and then into town with jennifer, christie, and katie. pretty normal stuff for a sabbath.

caroline and kim

erin

when we got back there were people playing various games. since there wasn't anything else to do, i joined in. and let me tell you, taboo in spanish is hard!! thankfully they were already close to the end of the game so i didn't have to try to be the one talking. but just listening and trying to figure out what they're trying to describe was pretty hard. thankfully the next game we were playing didn't really require words: uno (i thought that since we were in a spanish-speaking country it should have been called "one" but whatever). that was tons of fun, especially with the five trillion extra rules for ones, sevens, stacking etc.

that night we had more "organized" games. we played capture the flag with four different teams. the red team was trying to get the black teams' flag, the black team was trying to get the yellow flag, yellow was going for gray, and gray was going for red. mostly fun except for teams that were either confused about the rules or just wouldn't follow them. then we played chinese tag and after that, a version of what we called on bell tours "animals." basically, it involves clapping your hands against your thighs twice, making your "signal," clapping twice more, and then making the signal of some other person to pass it to them. they would then make their signal and afterwards pass it on to someone else. when your sign wasn't been done, you were just clapping your thighs and then your hands as they made the signal and waiting for someone to pass it to you. clear? probably not. but basically i played it so long that i actually gave myself bruises on my legs that i still have a week later.

it was about 12:30am when most people went to bed. but not me. i stayed up with about 10-14 other people as we continued to play the clapping game and then "donde esta la moneda?" which is a game in which one team on one side of the table passes a penny along underneath the table until the other team (on the other side of the table) says "manos arriba" at which everyone on the team with the penny raises their fists up in the air. then the other team says "manos abajo!" and the penny team slaps their hands down on the table. then the opposing team has five guesses to figure out under which hand is the penny. quite amusing....especially if one is sitting next to a cute guy. lol!! in all, i had a great time that night and ended up going to bed at 2. which meant that my intentions of getting up early the next morning to watch the sun rise over the ocean did NOT happen. :P

however, the next day turned out to be a good one as well. after breakfast and worship, erin, caroline, kim, and i took off walking down the beach. after awhile and after passing other people from camp that were swimming, i decided that walking along the shore was not good enough and so i went back to camp to change into my swimming suit. the weather was fairly warm and the water not too cool so i enjoyed just swimming and floating along for awhile. and the inevitable happened: some of the guys started hitting a volleyball around in the water and i had to join in. one of the things that i love about v-ball and games in general is that the language barrier is nowhere near as apparent as when just sitting around talking or whatever. even if you don't really have a clue what the guy next to you is saying, you can still hit the volleyball when it comes to you. but anywho, i can now officially say that i've played v-ball in the mediterranean! :D woot woot!

after getting back to camp late for lunch and eating, we all packed up and went home. and that was the fun, relaxing, and enlightening "campamento" to alcossebre!

PS considering this is a week late, i'll think of a suitable punishment and attempt to be more up-to-date with posts. have a great week!

¡un castillo!

2007-10-03T14:58:00.000-05:00

so last wednesday the 26th, we got to skip classes and go into sagunto. first luis amoros (one of our professors who was playing tour guide for the day) took us up to an ancient castle (castillo en español).

on the way we passed the largest catholic church in sagunto. which of course, like most old buildings in spain, had pretty cool architecture.

after giving us a short lecture on the history of the castle (basically it was built around first century A.D. and then destroyed/rebuilt several times), we wandered around and took pics of its coolness and the coolness of the surrounding view. like the following:

and this:
i was contemplating climbing up to the top of this section:

but wasn't sure how safe it would be. but then one of the guys did it and didn't die so i decided to also. it was a little amusing how a bunch of the other girls were telling me not to do it and that i would probably get hurt. all in all it actually wasn't bad in the least bit and here i am at the top:

after wandering around for half an hour (not nearly enough time; some afternoon some friends and i are going back for more), we went down to see a restored roman theater that they still use today in august for plays and concerts.

after that we went back down to the historic business district where there was a open-air market going on. apparently they have it every wednesday morning till 1:30p. which is a bummer cause i have class till then. but they have all sorts of fruits, vegetables, clothes, shoes, and accessories for sale out on the street.

and that's all for the trip to sagunto. later will be an update on the annual school campout to alcossebre.

Spain Update

2007-09-25T05:42:00.000-05:00

ok so i'm going to try and get y'all caught up on all the fun events in my life in spain so far, including but possibly not limited to, academic stuff, town outings, and room trouble. and in that order. so if school stuff bores you, you can skip the first section.

so. we had our placement tests thursday morning. first there was an oral comprehension part that i pretty much bombed. then while we were working on the multiple choice part, they would take three students out of the room at a time and have us each talk with a professor and carry on a small conversation so they could tell we were with our speaking skills. i did ok on that part. the actual "test" test part was iffy. it started hardish, got worse, and then got really easy at the end. which was good cause my brain was about fried by then. thankfully, as i found out the next day, i tested well enough to get in the advanzado 1 (B) class. which means that i'll be getting 300-level credit for my primary classes which is a very VERY good thing (it means i SHOULD be able to get ALL the classes i need for my major this year alone). woot. so now i am taking conversation (ana fernandez), composition(pepe lopez), grammar (juan antonio lopez), DELE (ana fernandez) (preparation for a proficiency exam at the end of the year), history of spain (luis amoros), spanish culture (luis amoros), and spainsh music (juan antonio lopez) (for jacque's benefit, i have listed my professor's names after the classes). so far classes are going well. the only ones that i'm a little worried about are those with luis amoros cause he tends to talk faster and i don't follow as well. but whatever, i'll make it.

on thursday, after our placement test, lunch, and a tour of campus, we had a bunch of free time so a bunch of us decided to go to the beach in puerto sagunto. at first we were going to ride our bikes, but there weren't enough for everyone and plus, the dean (lourdes), said that she was going into town anyway and could take some of us to at least the bus station where we could catch a bus to the beach. getting to the beach was no problem (my first time ever riding public transportation!) and it was amazing!!!
the mediterranean is so clear and it wasn't freezing like the pacific. and the sand was so soft. i loved it! except of course for the nasty old ladies that shouldn't have been wearing bikinis and the guys in the speedos. but at least there weren't any topless women. thank goodness.

however, the ride back to the school was somewhat more interesting that the ride to the beach. none of us remembered to get the name of the bus station we had gotten on the bus and we weren't even sure about where the bus station was at the beach. so we were standing around what we thought was the right station looking like a bunch of american tourists when a police car drives up. thankfully one of the girls, jessica (from wwu for those who care) knew spanish pretty fluently since she's half spaniard/half mexican/full american (you know what i mean). so she was able to tell the police officer where it was that we were trying to go. the hilarious thing about this encounter was that the police officer was pretty much flirting with her the whole time. and he had to be in his thirties (graying temples too). he even asked her if we were going to the festival in valencia on saturday and then gave her his cell number. lol! nevertheless, we got the help we needed and got on the next bus for sagunto. apparently we were at the right bus stop but we were on the wrong side of the road for the direction that we wanted to go.

when we got back to the original bus stop (which we were lucky enough to recognize from the bus) we learned after waiting awhile and also speaking with a native that no taxis came by there (we had to take a taxi back to the school because lourdes was not able to come back and pick us up). thankfully, a lady helped us call a taxi service. but of course when it got there, the driver told us he could only take four passengers, and there were six of us. so after arguing over whether or not we could fit more people in the car, he called another taxi for us and three went with him while the rest of us waited for the next taxi. which it came in five minutes and the driver knew where the school was (we now know to ask for "el CAS" [colegio adventista de sagunto]) and we made it safely back. the funniest thing that we learned about this excursion is that spanish men like to unbutton their pants while driving. both the police officer and one of the bus drivers that helped us had to button their pants and fasten their belts when they got up out of their seats and vehicles. it was kinda funny/awkward having a police officer get out of his car and button his pants in front of you while saying "perdon, perdon." i guess it's not so weird to have them undone when your job is to sit down all day in a vehicle, but couldn't you fix them BEFORE getting out of the car?

the next time that we went into town was on friday. every friday they take us to carrefour which is basically like an expensive walmart. i was able to get some school supplies i needed and also laundry detergent. that was a fun item to buy; all their detergents reek!!! but finally i found an ocean breeze one that wasn't TOO bad.

then, of course, friday night we had vespers. which was fine except for the fact that i was tired and it's really hard to try and follow a language you don't really know when you're tired. but i did some blessing out of the music. thankfully, for most of their songs they do powerpoint so we americans are able to sing along with our iffy pronunciation.

and if you've been paying attention and remember the order of things i said i was going to talk about, now is the time that you get to hear about the adventure of the dorm room. so the room i have is pretty good, balconey view and all that. however, friday night we discovered that it had some problems. i got up around 1pm to go to the bathroom and when i got back, i realized the floor by my bed was kinda wet. not thinking much of it, i went to the sliding door to the balconey to close it, thinking the water on the floor was just from the wind blowing the heavy rain in. not so much. the water was actually coming from the ceiling. we're on the top floor and there are apparently about five or six holes in the roof. which was NOT good news. cause not only was there water on the floor (where my backpack and suitcases were), but there was water on the desks. and i mean a LOT of water.

at first i panicked and actually rescued and dried off both my camera and laptop before i even realized that saray was still sleeping. so i woke her up and we both continued to move stuff up off the floor and off our desks. she called the assistant dean and also got buckets for the main drips. there was one hole where the water wasn't just a steady drip but rather a stream of water. After everything was pretty much safe from the water, Marisel (i *think* that's the asst. dean's name) opened up another room for us so that we could sleep away from the water. which was really nice of her but i still didn't sleep well that night. i kept thinking about my laptop and camera that might have been ruined. and every time that i tried to stop thinking about it cause i couldn't do anything more, the sound of the heavy rain (it almost seemed like a monsoon) kept reminding me. and of course during church the next day, it kept raining on and off again and distracting me.

so now i'm in a different room, without a balcony :( and having to keep going between both rooms cause we're supposed to move back in once the roof is fixed. which i think they were supposed to do monday but i'm not really sure. however, thankfully my laptop wasn't ruined. unless it has a secret that it's not telling me cause i'm using it right now to write this. and my camera's working too. so i should soon have pictures for those who want them of the view and of my room, both dry and wet. but first i have to figure out how to put them in a blog. i tried once already and it didn't work. so we'll see.

oh, one more thing before i go. they appear very liberal here. the academy girls are allowed to wear jewelry etc and some of them were wearing jeans to church. and the weirdest thing was that saturday night they played "click" the movie for us. and it wasn't watching the movie that odd, it was where we were watching it. right there in the sanctuary of the church. talk about awkward. but whatever. cuando esta en espana, hace como los espanoles.

and that's about all for now, so, que tengas un buen dia y hasta luego!

¡Estoy en España!

2007-09-25T05:40:00.000-05:00

Well here I am, safe and sound in Spain. I left Wednesday morning at 9:25 from Boise and flew to Denver. There I had a 2-hour layover before boarding a 10-hour flight on Lufthansa Airlines for Munich, Germany. As a sidenote, why don't we as individual countries call other countries what they call themselves? Why is it Munich in the US and Munchen in Germany? Why is it Spain in the US and España in Spain? Hmmm? Can anyone answer this question? Why not just have all countries call España, España and be done with it? Thankfully that flight went pretty well. I had two seats to myself (yeah!) and the first movie was actually pretty entertaining. It was a British movie called "Mr. Bean's Holiday" and it was hilarious. Y'all should watch it some time. And the food was good too. I was a little worried because I had forgotten to request vegetarian meals but I was just fine. For supper we had a choice between chicken/rice or pasta with marinara and then for breakfast it was an omelet and potatoes. So I had no meat issues and all the food was really tasty besides.

Anywho, moving on. From Munchen (ha! even if no one else does, I'll use original names), I flew to Valencia. This was AFTER sitting in the airport for four hours and working on intensive development of smoker's cough due to the smoking that was allowed in certain areas of the airport. Even though it was only a few small places where you could smoke, as Mike Dewey says, having a smoking section in a building is like having a peeing section in a pool. Grrrrr....
Moving on again. My apologies for the rants. You would too though about the smoke. I arrived in Valencia and found some other ACA students in the baggage claim area that had been on the same flight. So after we walked out of the airport (no customs or passport check whatsoever…really weird), there were five of us waiting around trying to figure out where the people from ESDES were to pick us up. After waiting awhile, we decided to call the school. Once we figured out how much to pay for the phones, we finally were able to get a hold of the director. Apparently they were confused about when we were coming in so they were hoping that either we would call them or they would see us when they came to pick up other students who were coming in at various times that day. Thankfully they already had someone on the way there since two others were coming in an hour after us. So we found them when they got off the plane and then all seven of us waited together until the school guy came and got us.

And so now I am living in the girls' dorm at Colegio Adventista de Sagunto (CAS) and am enrolled in the Escuela Superior de Espanol-Sagunto (ESDES).

Woot woot! And thankfully my roommate, Saray – a Spaniard, is nice and we've got a balcony with an amazing view (I can see the Mediterranean from my room!!!!).

Unfortunately, as most of you know, I'm not a great conversation initiator and when that's combined with poor Spanish skill…..you get my drift. But Saray's nice and so I'm sure we'll be fine.

And that's about all for now. Look for more updates later telling of the first full day and then the first day of classes. Love and miss you all! ¡Que tenga un buen fin de semana y feliz sábado!