Semana Santa

So begins my 'vacation' over Holy Week with my dad.

I left from Caceres on Friday (March 26th) at 6AM and got into Madrid around 10:40 or so since our bus driver was being slow, got on the metro with 2 other girls from our program that happened to be on the same bus and going to the airport that morning for Scotland. Arrival in Barajas was typical and I hurried my way along the terminals until I got to the Food Gallery which I thought was to be our meeting point. I got there around 11:30 or so and after scouring the area and not finding my father I got out and my sandwich from home and ate. I waited, started watching a movie and eventually walked around looking. About 2 I bought some internet and registered for my classes for next semester, chatted with my mother briefly who having no idea where he was either said i needed to find out. I looked around so some, called my mother after having no idea where my father was, she still hadn't heard from him either, so I had to try and find him and started asking security guards if I could try and find him, or to check to see if he was still in the terminal, or if he didn't make it on the plane, but they were of very little help. Eventually while I was at a pay phone talking to my mother, my dad appeared right beside me! Surprise! Apparently he was only a 5-10 walk farther down the terminal at the other cafeteria with the large sign labeled 'meeting point', and the calling card numbers weren't working so he wasn't a good amount of money trying to call but it never actually went through.
So about 4, my dad and I left from Barajas airport well over 4 hours after initially expected, and plus a headache of stress.
We found our hostal well enough, a little bit...janky, but the guy was nice enough.We went out our first night for tapas, sampled a couple different bars and slept in the next morning. On Saturday we took a day trip to El Escorial, the royal palaces where all the kings of Spain are buried. We had planned to go to the Valley of the Fallen, but apparently renovations were going on, so we just ended up skipping the Valley and spending more time at El Escorial and then upon getting back to Madrid we stopped at El Corte Ingles and bought food for the next next as well.
Sunday we tried to get to the Reina Sofia, but we slept in and apparently the museum closes at 2, so we just ended up going to the Royal Gardens instead and then making our way to the Prado and spending the rest of the day there, definitely wouldn't have minded spending some more time there though...
Monday we had planned to take a trip to Toledo and got up relatively early to make it to the Train station and get a ticket on the 9:20 bus, but once we finally got to the ticket office after waiting in line for a solid 20 minutes, we found out all the buses were full up until the 12:30. huh...that didn't go according to plan. So we hung out around the Madrid bus station, which was kind of nice actually since we got some coffee, ate my breakfast, checked in our bags at a luggage, checked out the weird rainforest thing in the main area. So, we eventually got on our train, and got to Toledo about 1. We took a bus up the hill and toured the cathedral until about 2:45, when I realized our train leaves at 3:30. So we started going, found our way back to the main area, caught the bus back down to the train station after nearly getting run over by the guy driving the bus, we got down to the train station about 5 minutes before our train left. We went in, and got stopped at security and was told that we couldn't get on the train because it was too late as they close the gates 2 minutes before it leaves, but the doors were still open, but he just wouldn't let us get on. So eventually we gave up, I got angry and kicked a bench, and we went and bought new tickets for 5:30, which we barely got on anyways since it was nearly sold out as well. So we decided to just stick around the bus station, rather than risk taking a bus back up to the touristy area and risk being late again as we only had an hour or so left after all was said and done. We made it to the train station about 6:10, our flight was to leave at 8, so we got our luggage, ran to the metro, got the airport, scrambled through security, and got to the terminal. Unfortunately as always, Ryanair was late, huge lines, but we arrived safely in Hahn.
We managed to catch the 12:30 bus from Hahn to Koblenz, but it was kind of an adventure getting there anyways, and we got good directions from an English speaking taxi driver and made it to our BnB okay after jumping a 6 lane highway late at night. So I'm here, waiting for my dad to get back from wherever he went, and I got kicked out as housekeeper came knocking, and that's where I'm stopping for now. Until later, Greetings from Koblenz.

Valencia

sorry for the long long gap in time, but unfortunately school and weekend trips have been fully occupying my time, since I usually have about an average of 2 papers per week, various worksheets, and then we always take trips on the weekends, so these days I barely have time to even get the next week's trip planned, but hopefully I'll get my older day trips up so I don't forget them as well! This weekend I'm in Valencia to celebrate Las Fallas. So I'll start there.

I am currently in a bocatta eating a 6 euro salad and using their Wifi. So begins Las Fallas.

I left Caceres at 6 and arrived at the Madrid bus station at 10, and then waited around for 3 hours for my bus to leave from Madrid to get to Valencia. Didn't sleep at the bus station as I wasn't sure if I'd wake back up, but I did sleep a little on the 4 hour bus ride to Valencia resulting in my neck and legs hurting since nothing is spain is big enough for me to comfortably use.

I got into Valencia about 5:15 or so, ate a sandwich, found a place to sit and waited. I had my feet up on the row of benches and a security guard came by and said "Sientate bien" and at first I was just, "como?" and the said, "feet on the floor" (in spanish of course) and I was just taken aback since I've never seen a security guard that polices the chairs.

Upon arriving in Valencia, I went into the nearest cafe in the bus station, ate my donuts that I bought in Madrid, and fell asleep on a table for about an hour or so. When I woke up, I didn't feel like going back to sleep so I decided to leave for the streets of Valencia. I had a map, but as the streets are never labeled I had to ask where I was and started walking. It seemed nice, but then I got to the main area in town and the Botellon's from the night before where just starting to wind down, this was about 7 or so. Granted, the streets were completely trashed, broken glass, 2 liters of coke, tobacco, the streets were slimy and slippery from all the 'refuse' and it reeks of urine. I mean, just walking through the streets I witnessed at least 3 guys peeing in a corner, and then happily walking off sure that no one noticed. Ever so sneaky.

I found my way through the crowds to the hostal and figured I couldn't check in till 12 so I just scouted the area. On the way back from the hostal after finding it's location and using their -clean! *gasp*- bathrooms the Botellon was mostly dispersed and the cleaning crews were moving in. First came the street sweepers to get the big stuff, then came the golf carts with brushes, hoses, and vacuums to pick up more trash, and then came the guys with fire hoses spraying down the streets, and then came the golfcarts that had high pressure nozzles that sprayed and scrubbed the area around them. Even then, it was still a little gross, but so much better. It was kind of fun to watch actually....

I then just started wandering, and began encountering drunk people on their way home. Most of them just passed, but a good number would stop and try to talk to me about something, like asking for a lighter and then asking why I don't smoke and how weird that is. One particularly chatty group of Spaniards outside of a Churro stand I talked with for 20 minutes or so... I swear the one girl was very drunk, but when I asked the sober guy he was just like "She's not dunk, she's just crazy. Spanish women are different than those in the US, am I right?" (spanish) I didn't mind talking to the guy since he could kind of form decent sentences in english, and seemed totally in control, while the girl had chocolate smeared around her mouth and was very umm...happy? I don't know, but regardless, the guy asked if I wanted to go get coffee tomorrow at 4, so he gave me his phone number and then I left. We'll see if I actually go or not, perhaps if I have nothing else to do tomorrow at 4.

That brings me about to here, which is where my battery is about dead, and I've been nursing the remains of my soda for the past 20 minutes. I may come back here if I need the wifi, but until then I'm out of time.

T

So I’ve been a little busy recently as now school is actually in full swing and have failed to update anything recently, and I figured I would make an update as I am currently in a hostal in Cordoba awaiting our meeting at 9 and I figured it I would spend my time more wisely than just watching Dr. Who.

I’m currently taking 4 classes at the university, 321, 323, 330, and 352. 321 is a two part course Spanish culture course that only meets Weds from 12-1 with one professor who teachers Spanish art, and then from 1-2 afterwards there is a different professor who teachers Spanish history. We really haven’t really done much in the history part, but the art portion will be a bit of a pain. Each week we cover a different artist and we have to write a 2-3 page paper every week on each week’s artist.

323 is “Spain Today” and our professor can’t speak. He seems to mumble everything and it’s rather hard to understand him but he seems pretty nice and the course doesn’t appear to be too bad. 330 is a literature course which appears to be pretty good. The professor enunciates pretty well and he’s quite enthusiastic about his subject, so I like this class so far. 352 is a phonology class with two different professors. We meet 3 times a week, two of which are from one professor and the other from a different professor. One of them is this nice Spanish lady who enjoys drawing pictures to explain what we don’t understand, and the other is this younger Spanish senora who I do not like. This class seems to be the most work as the two professors don’t seem to acknowledge each other and each assign homework and papers like they have their own class. For instance, this week we have a formal letter due from the angry one, and a paper from the other one due in the same week, in addition to the packet of homework assigned by the stupid lady. The younger one freaked out on us since we couldn’t answer this in class worksheet fast enough in groups and said to prepare better for next time and the packet it was over didn’t help us answer the questions at all. She’s rather awful…

But other than her, class is okay, I’m still a procrastinator and I’ve gotten an average of 4 hours of sleep a day this past week as I had a few papers due that I shouldn’t have waited to do. We have more papers here than we’ve ever had at ISU, so hopefully I’ll get better at writing those things in Spanish. Otherwise, I’m doing okay. I need some more candy though.

I’ve been taking waaay too many pictures and have been regularly (relatively speaking) uploading them to facebook. We’ve been taking trips out of town every single weekend since our first weekend so I’ve got quite a few pictures. So far we’ve been to Trujillo, Placencia, and Badajaz (in order to assist Carnval) and this weekend we first took a 6 hour bus ride to Granada and spent the night there and today we bussed to Cordoba where, and after being lost in the city since our bus driver apparently didn’t know where he was going, I am currently writing this entry on my laptop (and will be uploading it when I get home on Sunday night) since there is no free internet anywhere in Europe apparently. Since I can’t remember where the last blog stopped (and I’m out of time) I’ll try giving a bit more detail about all of our various daytrips when I get back and have some more time. Until then, check for the pictures from our trip to Granada and Cordoba sometime later this week and I’ll hopefully get back on top of my blog entries here eventually.

*Sunday Night: I just got back into Caceres and have homework to do (it's about 1 AM here), but I feel like I have to leave you with a picture of my favorite street performer ever

Saludos de Cordoba!

Catching Up

Seeing as I've not really kept up to my own expectations of trying to blog about everyday I've decided to just try and consolidate the past week.

On Thursday we were supposed to meet at 9 to go through the old city but my alarm didn't go off and I slept till 1, so I missed that part of the introduction to the city. Later that day though we were supposed to meet at the bar Boogaloo, so at least I was able to attend something.

We meet up outside the bar around 9 and Toni showed up 15 minutes late (as usual I guess) and told us that she had to go to work or something so she left us to our own devices. Raquel, one of the other coordinators of the Caceres program actually works there as a bartender so we spoke with her a bit and found a spot in the corner to occupy as the American's corner.

The bar was pretty small, but it was supposed to have live music and they didn't disappoint surprisingly, and the bassist was quite good. I have two videos of them and my camera did a great job dealing with the high sound levels! I was thoroughly impressed. As per europe, it was smokey and pretty darn packed once people started coming out, but as we were those weird Americans who went out before 11 we secured a pretty big portion of the tables. Drinks are expensive all over, I ordered a coke, a 200ml bottle cost me 2 Euro and a glass of Bailey's cost 5 Euro. Yeesh. Bringing a bottle of water next time...
<= This guy was not with us.

The music was definitely too loud, but not painful thankfully. I stuck around till about 1 or so and then left as we were supposed to meet at 10 the next day to go to the university, but apparently a group of girls after leaving Boogaloo after I did went around to another bar and stayed out till 4 or something. Definitely going to have to get used to this late culture.

Friday morning I definitely got up in time and we took the bus over the university. It's about a 20 minute bus ride, so a bus pass is a must. It's cost about .50 Euro to ride when you buy a card with 11 rides on it that costs 5.50, but the monthly pass is 27 Euro which ends up actually being more expensive if I only use the bus to go to class and back by about 11 euro. First we meet in the old district to sit in this cool room where they talked about how much opportunity there was at the university, and then we actually went to the university.

The university seems fine, we didn't see a whole lot of it as all of our classes are in one building, but it is pretty small compared to ISU. After being forced to sit in a classroom listening to people talk I was getting super hungry as it hit 1. By about 2 I was swearing under my breath about how hungry I was and when Toni asked for more questions to answer I said "Podemos salir?" (Can we leave?) and she looked at me and she said I needed a nap, but I said "no, I need food, ahora." So she let us go and I ran down to the cafeteria and bought a candy bar. Aaaaahhh....
We ended up walking home just to see how long it took, and it's a solid 65 minute walk, mostly uphill, so I think I'm taking the bus.

Later that night we went out to El Gran Teatro to see a free Jazz concert. The building is gorgeous, but unfortunately the place was way too crowded to even barely see the band. I took a video of them as I could not for the life of me get any good shots of the band once they had started since it was so crowded and smokey. Since it was not too exciting being really hot, squished, smokey, and lacking a view, we left after a few songs and headed out into the streets. We stopped at a pastry shop right before they closed at 8, and got some goodies which were delicious.

We ended up going to another bar called, La Divina Comedia. It was such a cool bar. Great themeing, music wasn't too loud (and I liked it as it was a mix of american and spanish rock, pop, and dance), was pretty much deserted before midnight, and the drinks were pretty cheap too. Annoyingly enough a 200ml coke cost me 1.50 and the wine and mixed drinks are only a euro. blah. Make sure you check out the video of the bar, it gives a much better description of the bar than I can, or my low light pictures can.

Saturday we were planning on taking a bus to the small city called Trujillo. Tim, me and Sarah were the only ones really interesting in going so we planned to meet at the Estacion de autobuses at 10 as the bus left at 10:15 for Trujillo and cost something like 3 euro. I google maped it and set off in the morning ready to go. I met up with Sarah part way there and so we walked together trying to figure out the maze that it Caceres. Needless to say, we got lost as there are no freaking street signs visible to the average person. After hustling through a 2 km walk and asking some old lady where it was, we got there after the bus had left, and Tim, had left us. The next bus left in 2 hour, and we really didn't feel like waiting since Tim was the one who knew where stuff was there anyways and we would be totally lost in the city.

On the way back I got some pictures of some really cool graffiti (although I have trouble calling it that as it's gorgeous). Some of the other ones were more amusing, but I also really like this one for it's awesome surrealism appeal. You can check out the rest of them on facebook as they didn't need to be stitched together in photoshop.

Since it was a saturday and there were no required meetings, we sort of wandered around Caceres. We stopped at a shop called Chocolat and ordered 10 churros con chocolat which was pretty much fried bread with a large cup full of melted chocolate. I mean, this stuff was freaking thick, like chocolate syrup thick but tasted like chocolate. They weren't too bad but the chocolat was too much and somehow Laura Drum drank the whole cup and took another girl's to finish off... Later that day and found a cool little garden area. We met a friend of one of the girls who was a Caceres native who showed us a few other bars, none of which I liked as the Gaudi Club was very noisy, fulled of testosteroned up guys shouting, yelling, and fighting, and we weren't really welcome by the looks we got. The other one was tiny, and at that point we just sort of stood outside the bar and talked for a while before going back home. I spent the night editing photos and watching Scrubs till 3 am. That last part was probably my most relaxing night yet.

On Sunday we took a hike up the mountain they call "La Montana," which is simply the mountain. It was very physically draining as it was a practically like climbing Uncle Mikey's hill for 3 km. It actually got rather cold as we neared the top, and the sunset and the view were gorgeous. I took way too many pictures which leaves me with the arduous task of going through them, which I have yet to do except for two. I'll leave you with one of my favorite pictures so far:

Saludos De Caceres

Another Day

I guess I'm pretty far behind as far as far as updating this goes seeing as it's now Saturday and I have yet to write about anything other than Tuesday. Well as a brief overview since getting here on Tuesday and unpacking Tuesday night we've meet at Correos (the post office) nearly every day about 10:00 to go and do one thing or another.

Weds 1-27-09

We went to the library to get library cards and took a quick walk through the city to La Vieja which is a statue of an old woman who used to sell newspapers on the corner of that plaza everyday. So, when she died they made a statue of her. You can see the statue hidden amongst all the students.
In that same spot there is a church we when through and got a talk from the rector of it or something in which he told us the history of the church I think, but I honestly couldn't understand much of what he was saying because he was talking kind fast. It was pretty cool on the inside and in the courtyard there were orange trees growing, which was kind of weird. Lots of cool pictures to check out which I will direct you towards facebook if you want to see the rest of them.

Later that day after returning home and almuerzoing we met back up and walked over to the Centro de Comercial, which is more or less the mall. We met back up around 5 or so, and since it was a solid 20 minute walk the sun was starting to set by the time we got there. The mall is about the same size as North Grand, perhaps a little bigger as it's got a walmart-ish thing in it.
Also noteworthy is the fact that right now all over caceres there are Rebajas (sales) on practically everything in every store window. There is a movie theater inside that has movies for 4.65 Euro, so it's not outrageous but it's not a dollar theater. Otherwise, the mall looks to be a good source of shoes, clothing and purses, so, practically useless to me. After wandering Caceres for a few more days I feel more certain in my statement that every 2 of 3 stores sells exclusively purses, shoes, cloths, or jewelery. I feel like there is nothing for men to look here. I've found appliance shops and stuff but nothing full of electronics. I liked this picture of the two women looking into the store with the rebajas right above it. It seems about right.

I don't have Thursday's pictures on facebook yet so I guess I'll be leaving things off here until I get those uploaded. I'll leave you with another interesting picture from the candy store:

Saludos De Caceres

Getting To Cáceres

I guess I feel like I'm starting this blog so that so I don't have to repeat myself to all the rest of my family, and I guess so I my mother will be able to ask me about things other than my everyday stuff when I actually get to talk her.

Well, here it goes.

We left Ames monday morning, January 25th, in a blizzard to get down to the airport. That was a blast. I wish I could have gotten pictures of the semi tractor in the ditch with its trailer blocking the whole of the interstate. But we made it to the airport.

Once there we discovered that my flight had been changed due to weather cancellations. Originally we thought he said Liberia Air, which made me think, how in the world can Liberia afford an airline? but it was actually scheduled on Iberia airways, which nevertheless worried my mother as apparently Iberia loses luggage more often that others do, but in the end it didn't really matter as all my luggage did arrive.

After a teary goodbye (mother) I went up the escalator and started through the 5 minute walk through Des Moines security. All was more or less according to keikaku.

I flew from Des Moines to Chicago and after a short little flight I landed. There was some boarding pass nonsense that was originally initiated by the guy at the Des Moines airport who issued my ticket for Ohare. He said that when I got to Chicago I needed to go the International Terminal and then to Iberia's front desk to get my boarding pass. When I landed in Ohare I asked an employee where it was and I would have to leave security and take a tram to get there. I only had an hour, so that seemed out of the question. I then simply just started walking towards the front of Ohare and eventually found a nice old lady in an information desk and she informed me that I didn't have to go the front desk and that the people at the terminal that I was leaving from would be able to get me my boarding pass as well. So, armed with that information I looked up my flight number, found my gate to be across the airport and walked quickly just in case I did still need to go to the international terminal. No problems there.

I did notice the large group of chatty people in the terminal, but chose to ignore them as they most likely from my program. There would be a time for introductions and I wasn't up to it quite yet. Too much stress and running around to be chatty. We boarded the plane and then proceeded to sit at the terminal for well over an hour as we waited for whatever possessed them to leave.
Takeoff finally came and we were airborne. I listened to music, did a sudoku or two , watched 6 episodes of scrubs, tried to sleep, and ate this slightly nauseating meal. I scarfed it down and really just enjoyed the bread and butter more than anything else. Also, it's not cheesecake, it's flan. It was so disappointing. At least I still had my cookies and other postres.
So we finally arrived over spain. The flight attendants started handing out immigration forms or something and when I asked what they were for she asked if I had a passport so I said yes and she said I didn't need it and as she was walking away said something about how she just assumed that I was a US citizen. Which worried me because I didn't get a form to fill out. We landed and unloaded without incident. I sprinted off the plain to avoid chatting with people and made my way quickly down the awesome treadmill things, the entire main terminal has a really long row of them so if you're walking fast you just fly, it was great. Eventually I had to slow down and figure out where I was supposed to go. I figured I would have to go through the passport security or something. So I started towards the large row of booths labeled something like 'passporte algo' so I went there handed them my passport, they stamped it, looked at my visa motioned me on my way. Security was disconcertingly easy.
I then found my way to luggage terminal, and discovered that there were nearly 20 cintas for flights to dump luggage on. Wow. I found the belt that was for the chicago flight, put my stuff down, and called my mother. Keep in mind it was about 10:00 or so my time so I called her at 3 AM. Heh.
It was about now that I finally decided to make my introductions to the rest of the group. I wandered over to the American looking group of students and spoke with the only guy there, Drew. We waited, chatted, et cetera, and everyone finally got all of their bags and we headed out.

Enter confusion.

So we were supposed to meet at the Food Court, except that we had no idea how to get there. After wandering and looking around we finally realized that we were in terminal 4 and had to take a bus in order to get to terminal 1, which is where we believed the food court was. We got off at Terminal 2 and walked the rest of the loooooong walk. And there it was, like a beacon of light: the food court. We had arrived around 10:30 or something like that and Toñi Paín (our coordinator in Cáceres) was supposed to meet us at noon. So we waited. I chatted with a student who ways staying in Madrid and when I broke out of Resses Pieces her eyes lit up. Apparently she had been eying them since I left them out on the table, so I offered her some and she seemed extremely happy as she hadn't had peanut butter in 4 months. Heh. The picture above was in the Food Court. Was just a weird thing, this type of art was allover the place. So after waiting in the food court for a while I bought a water and talked. Eventually Toñi showed up around 12:30 and we stuck around a while longer while Toñi talked to people before we finally got on the bus to Cáceres.
Once on the bus I took out my camera and took pictures. I'm definitely not going to be able to post them all here, so look at my facebook to see a more complete photo record of things. Later on the bus I took out my smaller camera and took a decent video of the city while we were driving in on the bus, it's in HD so you can get a better view of the city if you have the patience to wait for it to load. We stopped part way at a restaurante to use the restrooms and get a 'snack', which turned out to be practically a meal. At each table of 4 people we have a giant 2 liter bottle of water, two tortilla de patatas, croquetes, and a plate of bread. Yeesh. Worthy of note in my catalog of pictures is the epic solar farms we saw. Now would probably be the time to watch the video of entering the city. We arrived, met our families, and went to our new homes. So far I really like my family but going to end this posting here. I'll try and get some pictures of the family up as the mother is coming home tonight (Thurs, Jan 28th) later this week and hopefully get some pictures of the city.

Saludos de Cáceres