Time is dwindling...

Ahhh! I can't believe how little time I have left here and I can't help but thinking about how hard it will be to readjust to life in the US. Everything is so much more laid back here! Plus, I've gotten used to not having a ton of school work...not good for next year. So not too much exciting has been happening, just trying to enjoy the time I have left with the friends I've made here. It's so sad! On Saturday the ISA group went to the Albufera, a natural reserve about 20 minutes outside of Valencia. We went on a boat through it, which was fun. the weather was perfect! After we went to the beach outside of it, which was even more gorgeous than the Valencian beaches and had so many waves!
The next day, Jenna and I went for a walk in the rio and came upon a festival in the park. In Sevilla for the past week there has been the "ferrier de sevilla", a celebration for Sevilla kind of like our Fallas, where everyone dresses up in traditional clothes etc. The festival in the rio was put on by the people who used to live in Sevilla but not live in Valencia. Lots of women and little girls were dressed up in traditional flamenco outfits and there was lots of food. In addition, they had horses-Andalusians! They were gorgeous, and they had a rink where they were showing them, prancing and rearing. It was fun, except one of the men was using spurs on his poor gorgeous horse and it was starting to bleed. Our Spanish mom also showed us pictures from when she was a little girl and her mom had dressed her up for every festival. There were pictures of her as a Valencian fallera and wearing the Sevillian flamenco dress. It was adorable. She grew up in Madrid with her family, and has one son who works as a translator on a cruise ship...so he gets to travel the world. Really cool. Susana is a really smart woman and I look up to her a lot. She's really smart and knows everything about politics as well as every spanish celebrity. She loves animals, and apparently had to stop watching Snakes on a Plane because there's a part where the snakes kill the animals in storage...nevermind the part before where people shot each other. She's very progressive and I like to listen to her thoughts about the world. For instance, there's a major social issue here with immagrants from Africa who can't get work permits. They're fleeing from much worse situations, but without work permits can't survive. Therefore, they make a living selling illegal things like pirated movies and knock off designer handbags. They're everywhere, and when the police come, they grab their goods and take off. Our host mom buys from them because she says it's much better than having them steal from people to earn a living. It's an interesting concept: which illegality is worse?
I think that all of the social and political issues here are very interesting. Some are the same but some are entirely different. I need to continue to keep up on my European politics when I return the the U.S....which is really soon. Oh man.

Home Sweet Valencia

So I'm back in Valencia again, and I've already had a really interesting week. I went to a Paella cooking class! It wasn't as awesome as I imagined, since we basically just watched a chef do it and he told us what he was doing while he did it. It was still pretty helpful though, and I definitely will be making my own version of paella once I get back to the US. After watching him cook it, we got to eat it...it was really amazing. After that we went to a bar with a bunch of us, where we had quintos, which are really small beers in bottles that you can get 2 for a euro. It's pretty economical. Haha. Then we went to a Valencia game. We were all the way in the top of the stands, which was really awesome because we could see everything in the stadium as well as outside. We had lots of space and it was pretty much the ISA kids so it was really fun, but we didn't have quite the intense atmosphere as the more expensive seats with the hardcore fans. It was a good game though, and Valencia beat Bilbao 2 to 0. Yay European soccer! Valencia is third in the league, while Barcelona is first and Real Madrid is second. It's really cool seeing the highlights of the games every day on tv so I'm constantly updated with the soccer here! I love it!
Also, I've been meeting with an intercambio, a Spanish person who is learning english. We take turns speaking in english and spanish so that we can learn the languages better from native speakers. His name is Carlos and he goes to school at the University of Valencia. He's really cool! I've taught him ridiculous slang, like the word "sketchy". My accent has definitely gotten a lot better and talking with him in spanish forces me to think in spanish. It's really hard, but it kind of gives me a rush. I just feel so good when I'm understanding everything and thinking in spanish.
Our nights out are getting continually later. Last night I looked at my clock and saw that it was 3:45am. I literally had the thought that "wow, it's still early". Everything happens later at night here. Also, being in Spain has made me so much more laid back. My intercambio had emailed me about meeting one day, so I walked for a half an hour in the rain to meet him at the school, waited for about an hour, just flipping through my spanish dictionary, realized something must have happened or he hadn't gotten my response email, and headed back home. I wasn't even upset. I feel like in the US, we're so rushed. If I had gotten somewhere on time I would have waited maybe 15 minutes (not enough here since EVERYONE is ALWAYS late), been really really annoyed that they wasted my time, and left. It just wasn't a big deal to me, even though overall travel time took about an hour, plus the hour that I waited for. I think readjusting will be really hard...

Milan and Lake Como

The next day we wistfully left our beloved Venice to catch a train to Milan, where we met up with 2 other girls from our program. We wandered around the city and saw the Duomo, the insane and awesome cathedral there. It was really beautiful inside. We also saw the crazy shopping center that features all the designer stores, like Gucci and Armani etc. Needless to say, we couldn't afford any of them. The next morning we took a train to Lake Como, about an hour outside of Milan. It's beautiful! The lake is y shaped and around the outside you have a view of the snow covered Swiss Alps. George Clooney owns a house somewhere along Lake Como, but alas, we didn't see him. We had the BEST gelato here. At night, we had fun playing cards with the hostel manager, who was British but had been living in Italy for a while. The next day, we stayed for as long as we could, and just sat on the rocky beach before we caught the train back to Milan. The city of Milan was just like any other big city. It didn't have the charm of the other Italian cities we had seen. It was just like Madrid or New York. It was a cool urban atmosphere, and it had a really fashiony feel, but it was probably my least favorite. However, the hostel was a lot of fun. We ended up meeting a bunch of cool people, some from South Africa, and others that were Americans studying in Madrid. One of the girls studying in Madrid, actually was from New Hampshire and is friends with one of the girls on my Hartwick soccer team! These connections are crazy and make me wonder how many we never find out about. It's a small world after all.
The next day we flew out of Milan back to Valencia, where the weather was gorgeous. We spent Sunday, the day after our return from vacation, on the beach. Gotta love this.

Venice!

We arrived in Venice at 7:30 am on Easter. We met up with our friend Kelsey in town and then went to our bed and breakfast that was really cute. We just wandered along the narrow streets and canals, admiring how gorgeous everything was. A lot of the houses were old, and prettily colored. They had such a quaint charm, and the complete lack of cars added to the atmosphere. It was so beautiful. We wandered into lots of little shops where they sold really cool glass (Murano class from Venice is world famous) things and there were Venetian masks everywhere! We decided to go out for a good meal that night since it was Easter. They eat around 7 in Italy, which is so much earlier than Spain! We went to a cheaper restaurant and got pasta and some red wine. It was lovely. The next day we wandered some more and found the main plaza. It's absolutely gorgeous. The basilica, their cathedral is stunning. There are also toooons of pigeons. It's crazy! Around the square are lots of upscale cafes, with seats outside and live music playing. We went to get coffee at one but discovered that there was a 7 euro covercharge for sitting outside with the orchestra on top of a 7 euro coffee. Ridiculous! Inside of the Basilica is incredible. There are so many religious mosaics and gold and it covers the entirety of sloping ceiling and arches. There are also 4 horses that were stolen by Venice from Istanbul there a very long time ago when Venice was a huge power in Italy and Istanbul, the capital of the western roman empire, that had taken a lot away from Venice, started to lose power. The history of Italy is so interesting. Everywhere you go, something important happened. It's so cool. I would love to take a class just about the Roman empire. Venice was so beautiful. We also saw a major bridge that was designed by the same architect who did our ciudad de artes y ciencias, which you could definitely tell.
The last day we rode on a gondola!!! It was so exciting. It was just how you imagined a gondola ride would be, beautiful and tranquil. It was preeetty romantic for me, Jenna, and Kelsey, haha. The gondolier pointed out Marco Polo's palace, the oldest Gondolier making place, places where The Italian Job was filmed, and Cassanova's house! It was a perfect day, and the perfect time of day, as we didn't run into any other gondolas. The day before we'd seen a 9-gondola jam on a really touristy stretch and really didn't want that. It was excellent. We ate lots of gelato and I got this really sweet Murano glass necklace. Venice is definitely a must see place for everyone, and it's slowly sinking so get over there!

Amalfi Coast: Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi, and Salerno

On Monday, we took a train from Rome to Napoli. From there we took another train to Sorrento, a town on the coast. We had some difficulties with the train, as it broke down part of the way into the trip and had to backtrack to the last station. There, we got on a train already full, and so we ended up crammed in and standing for most of our hour long ride. Not fun. Then we got off one stop later than we were supposed to and ended up walking a long distance with our heavy backpacks to our hostile. Not great, but we had fun when we went to town. It was very touristy, but there were lots of cute little shops on cute cobble stone streets. We had lots of problems with the Italian boys in this town. They would stare at us as they drove by on mo-peds, literally turning their heads all the way around as they passed, and beeping and whistling. When Jenna and I went to a restaurant, the waiter was hitting on me ridiculously, beginning with, "can I get you anything? Food? Drink? My phone number?" Haha. jenna and I also bought some Limoncello, a lemon liquor that's really popular in Europe and is produced here. Delicious! We bought some lemon flavored chocolate too, which was sooooo delicious. The views in Sorrento were gorgeous of the sea, with big cliffs and cute houses. We could also see Mount Vesuvius across the water from us, since we were really close to Pompeii. I wish we could have gone there for a bit, but we enjoyed all the other places we saw.
The next day, we hopped on a bus, through winding passageways up and down mountains to Positano. It was absolutely gorgeous. There was a beach and the weather was gorgeous, plus narrow little cobblestone streets all up through different parts of the cliffs that we would explore. The houses were all different colors, and it was just so scenic. There were a lot less tourists here, but the stores were boutiques, a little bit out of my price range. Jenna and I spent most of our two days here hiking and relaxing on the beach. We had some delicious cappuccino and a canoli that was fantastic as well. I think Positano is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.
On Thursday, we took a bus over to Amalfi. It was beautiful as well, though a bit more of a city. Our hostel was a little bit outside of the city, in Atrani, which was a really small town. We explored the cities for a while. There was a really gorgeous church in Amalfi. After eating lots of bread to save money, we decided to binge on Italian food and got some delicious lasagna and bruschetta. We also had some Nutella gelato that was so thick it was like literally eating Nutella on a cone. Yum. That night, in Atrani, we watched a small town Easter procession. The people wore all white and masks (kind of KKK like) and carried a big alter with the crucifixion of Jesus on it. Others carried torches, and we think that nearly the entire town followed this procession, chanting. It was really neat to experience.
The next day we took a ferry to Salerno. It was definitely the biggest city of all the Amalfi Coast, and we found that it was our least favorite. for lunch, we had a kebab. Kebabs are only the most amazing food in Europe. They're basically their fast food/late night food and are Turkish. They involve a pita or wrap and a ton of really delicious meat that they roast for long periods of time. Then there's lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and lots of really good spices. They're to die for. Anyways, haha, we just explored the city for a while. We found a really neat church, and there were lots of boutiques to look at. We went and laid on the beach for a while and read. I read so much english books this trip, what with all the train rides and travel time. I read the Portrait of Dorian Gray, traded it in for Witch and Wizard, and then Jenna let me read her copy of The Shadow of the Wind. The Shadow of the Wind was really amazing and I definitely recommend it. It takes place in Barcelona, so it was neat that I had seen lots of the places they talked about. And it's just really intense. The next day we hopped on a train to Bari, where we got in really late, so that we could take our plane from there to Venice. That Saturday night was spent in the airport. Fun fun.

Rome!

It's been a while, as I've been off on my spring break in Italy. First, I went to Rome with Jenna. It was amazing! There's just so much history there that you can see everywhere you go. When you go for a walk through the modern downtown you'll just randomly come across some old ruins. Saturday, our first full day there, we went to all the sites. The Coloseeum was just amazing. It's so different in person, just standing in front of it makes you feel so small and insignificant when it's a piece of such ancient history that has stood for about 2000 years. Inside is even grander. I couldn't stop taking pictures. After that we went to the Roman forum, which are ruins from the ancient city. It's so insane. I tried numerous times to just imagine what the city would look like if all the buildings and pillars and walls hadn't crumbled. It's so cool. We wandered around the city for a while longer and saw more sites, like all the crazy buildings and monuments. This included the Trevi Fountain, and Pantheon and such. We also ate some gelato, which is the best ice cream EVVVVER, and some fast food pizza, which they literally sell by the gram. It was AMAZING. The next day, Palm Sunday, we went to the Vatican where we saw the pope! Then we went inside the museum and got to see old Greek sculptures, tons of painting and other sculptures, and finally the Sistine Chapel. Everything was so ornate and beautiful. The Sistine Chapel is so much more than the one image that everyone knows. It's a huge room covered completely is beautiful paintings, on all the walls and the ceiling. I wish I could have just laid down and stared at the ceiling for hours, but it was pretty crowded,and there were signs that specifically said, no sitting. Overall, Rome was really cool, but packed with tourists. I don't think I'd want to be there for any length of time, but I loved just wandering around and randomly running into famous buildings or more ruins. It's definitely a must-see city.

End of Fallas

Fallas has continued to be more awesome. tuesday night we watched the fireworks again. This time they started at 1 am. Everything happens so much later here! Then we continued to meet up with a bunch of friends of ours in the program and wandered down to Barrio Del Carmen, where there were tons of young people drinking and dancing on the street. It was a lot of fun. The guys had fun throwing petardos at each other...they're actually pretty fun. I no longer jump evey time I hear one go off, since it happens all the time! Yay! Wednesday we went to the Mascleta again. It was so powerful that we could see the glass windows of the buildings around us shaking. Later, we went to watch a parade of Falleras and Falleros bringing flowers to a huge Virgin Mary wooden frame (ofrenda). People attach all of these one little bunch at a time to form a dress with crazy patterns. It's insane and goes on for two days. We have to check it out again tonight when it's finally finished. Then Jenna and I checked out a bunch of little artisan stands that were set up. They had some really neat stuff. At night, we met up to go to an Irish pub to celebrate St. Patrick's Day a little bit. It was fun and there were so many people there! We ended up making friends with some guys from Manchester, England who were really cool. Then we went to the fireworks, which were magnificent again. After, we headed toward Carmen but wandered around a lot, seeing new Fallas and drinking and talking. Then, we came across one of many neighborhood party tents and asked someone if we could go in. He said yes and we ended up dancing with a bunch of Falleros to Spanish and American music! It was soooo fun and such an awesome experience. We made it home by 6 am and then woke up at 12, the same times as before, so that we could go to the Mascletas. This is such a crazy week but it's so so fun and I'm just so happy that I'm actually here in Valencia experiencing this! Yesterday, Friday, was the creama, or burning of all the Fallas. We chose to watch the violin one (picture in a previous blog). It was amazing! They set off all the noisemakers and sparklers and fireworks and then burned it. It was like the biggest bonfire I'd ever seen! There were electric cables pretty close to the enormous fire which seemed kind of dangerous, and I think that's why the bomberos had to keep spraying water all around the Falla. The problem was, all the ash falling mixed with the water, and when the wind blew slightly toward you, you'd get covered with wet drops of black ash. Kinda gross, but the fire was epic enough to make up for it. Tonight I'm going to a bull fight, which will hopefully be really cool. And, it's 21 degrees! Hot day! Woo woo! Yay for the end of Fallas, it was definitely the most exciting celebration I've ever been a part of.

Beginning of Fallas!

Fallas is amazing! We got back from Granada and in just about every little square all over the city there is a huge Falla! They're these constructed statues that are stories tall and of cartoon like characters (often charicatures of famous people). They're so cool! Luckily I've been here long enough to recognize a lot of these people! And there's so many of them! People are going crazy here. We went to the Mascleta on Monday and there were so many people there. Everyone was drinking beer in the square and the noise was sooo loud. We learned that you can't plug your ears or the force of the fireworks might actually rupture your eardrum. Ouch! It was really cool though. The whole ground rumbles! Later that night we went to fireworks, which were so much better than any I've ever seen in the states. They made us stand so far back because they were so strong and huge! They do this every night and I'll definitely be going. All around us people were just chillin, watching the fireworks and drinking in the streets (botellon). And throughout every day there are so many people with little fireworks (petardos) and noisemakers and things that make loud sounds. It's INSANE! Then we went to check out the "iluminacion", which is a ton of lights along a couple neighborhood's streets. It was so gorgeous. We were surrounded by lights. Amazing. Then, around 2am, we saw a big fire in the park, we went to investigate and saw that a TREE was set on fire!!! So insane!
Today we walked around town some more and saw parades and parades and groups of Falleras and Falleros. They wear traditional clothing and the women wear their hair in a sci-fi like manner that looks wicked sweet. I guess all the neighborhoods have groups and they dress all the kids up and lots of the older people, and each has a band with them and they walk around the city. It's just crazy. We had our first churros and chocolate from a stand and they were AMAZING! Fallas is just going to keep getting better and better. I'm psyched.

Granada

Hola! Granada was amazing! Friday night we went to a flamenco show in this place called "La Cueva" or the cave. The dancing was so gorgeous. There were two guitars, and older man singer, 3 female dancers, and 1 male dancer. It was really pretty, with graceful arm movements and tapdance like feet tapping to the beat (very quickly, like 32nds!) It was really moving. The older man's singing voice was raspy and it sounded kind of like a husky blues singer. Everything was gorgeous. Saturday morning we went to visit the Alhombra, the palace which was the last threshold of the Muslim sultans in Espana before the reconquest by the Catholic Kings. It was the most gorgeous place I've ever seen. The gardens were so pretty, with amazing fountains and plants. And inside the actual palace was soooooooo gorgeous. There were intricate carvings and tiling on every wall, with beautiful columns and views of the hills which are covered in cobble stone streets and old white houses. It's just amazing. Words and pictures just can't describe it. Another awesome part about Granada are the tapas. It's so cheap to eat and drink! When you go to a bar and order a beer or sangria, you receive a tapa, which is basically a little snack with it. this can range from little sandwiches and french fries to potatoes with interesting sauce and meat on them. They're delicious and you can make a dinner out of them by having a couple beers. And it cost the same as beer in Valencia! Awesome! We also wandered around some of the Arab markets, which were cute and had some neat stuff. We went to the huge cathedral and saw the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel (the ones who gave Christopher Columbus money) and Juana la Loca and her husband Felipe of Portugal. There were amazing carvings! We saw Isabel's crown and scepter as well. Pretty sweet. Then we walked up some of the hills and looked around the beautiful white houses. It's so pretty. If I'm ever rich, I would buy one of those houses, overlooking the Alhombra. Saturday night we went to a discoteca that was high up and had an amazing view of the lit up Alhombra at night. It was super cool. Overall, Granada was pretty amazing. Now let Fallas begin!

Ciencias, Cine, y Cultura

Hi! Saturday night we went to a discoteca which was really fun. We tried to live the Spanish lifestyle and made it to staying there until 5 am, but then we decided to go home and get some sleep. Still a little early for the Spaniards though. Sunday, me, Allison, and Jenna went to the science museum. It was so fun! They had lots of hands on type things for kids, which we had a blast with. I am the best at tying shoes with surgical equipment, my back is the hottest (learned from a heat detector), and my feet are Egyptian type (learned from some type of computer that told me about my feet). Hmmmm. Mostly I just love science! :) When Jenna and I went for a run through the park earlier in the day, there were so many kids throwing fireworks! They're just things that make really loud sounds. We even saw a bunch of parents teaching their very young children how to throw smaller ones. I unfortunately jump every time someone throws one. They're just so much louger than in the United States! And it's an entire week and a half before Fallas even begins! Ridiculous. Apparently during Fallas the older kids (with the bigger firecrackers) start to target anyone who flinches, so I need to work on that. We also learned about popular fireworks called "Borochos" (drunkards), that travel in crazy paths and you never know which direction they're going in and are dangerous if they hit you! Ahhh! Fallas will be crazy. We also went to the Mascleta, and there were tons of people there. Suppsosedly, they increase in intensity each day and this one was even crazier than before! This time there were colored rockets and a bunch of louder ones. Very exciting!
Monday night I played basketball with some of the ISA kids (no soccer fields available) and we met some cool Spanish guys. It's cool how easy it is to get in on a pickup game or how people will ask to join. It's really relaxed and everyone is so friendly. Tuesday, Jenna and I went to a street market by the Plaza de Torros. It was huge! The markets here have EVERYTHING you could possibly need. They have kitchen accessories to lingere to baby clothes to toilet seats to lamps. Awesome! They have so many clothes that are cheap. I bought a dress that was a knock off of one that I fell in love with in a really fancy expensive store. yay! I also bought a cute shirt that I managed to barter for, and had a good conversation with the vender. It was really fun. And I got a pair of really cute comfy flats for only 4 euros! Markets are definitely the best place to buy cheap clothes, especially since rebaja season is over now. Wednesday night I went with my grammar class to a movie theatre and we watched El Secreto de Sus Ojos, the Argentinian film that won an Oscar. It was good, but I found it difficult to follow in Spanish. I think, since I don't have that much difficulty with movies we watch on tv or Aguila Roja, that this is because the accent was completely different than what I was used to. Overall, it was a pretty good movie though. The theatre was similar to a US one, but had a weird slope that went down in the middle and back up again. I'm not sure how, but it worked out so everyone could see. And there was no popcorn. There were only vending machines for drinks and candy. It wasn't a big huge cinema though, and one friend told me that there's a cine where you get bags of candy like a candy store! We're going to Celda 211, the winner of best picture for the Spanish awards, the Goyas with our cine class. Speaking of the Oscars though, our host mom got up at 5am to listen to the Oscars on the radio to hear who the winners were. She gets very excited about those things, and it's adorable.
Today I had my first and only midterm for my vanguardia class. I think it was pretty easy, but who knows since it's all in spanish and we had to write an essay and such. It's a pretty good class. Otherwise, I've continued to observe differences in Spanish culture. They cook with mainly olive oil and hardly ever butter. I don't think I've seen butter the entire time I've been here. Our culture professor says it's a lot healthier. The food is delicious. I'm going to take a paella cooking class sometime in April! I've also learned a lot about the politics here. There's two parties, el Partido Popular (the popular party) and the PSOE (Socialists). Basically, the PP is the conservative party like our republicans, they protest abortions and like religion in schools, no rights for homosexuals, etc. The Socialist Party is the liberal party, and not the same as socialists are in the US. The current president is Zapatero, who's a part of the PSOE. Our Senora likes him and is pretty liberal herself. She knows a lot about politics, and famous people, and everyone we see on the news. So, I suppose that makes me a Socialist here. It's all very interesting. Politically they have a lot of the same issues as us. For example, they wanted to put in a power plant, but there were a lot of protestors, for each side. Putting in the power plant would provide work for many many people, but also risks environmental problems in the future. Ultimately, they aren't going to put it in. Their economy is also pretty bad. It's kind of funny, because they call it "La Crisis", rather than saying the economy is bad. Our culture teacher told us we only needed to print out pictures in black and white since we were in the crisis, and restaurants advertise their deals with slogans like, "our solution to the crisis". It's almost how we named the Great Depression. Unluckily for them (but very luckily for me), the value of the Euro is dropping. It's now about $1.4 to every euro which makes a big difference with large amounts of money.
So, tomorrow we go to Granada, which will be GORGEOUS, and after that we don't have school for the crazy week that is Fallas. After that, we have one week of school, and following that, 2 weeks of vacation in which Jenna and I will be in Italy! We have so much time off! And Fallas is going to be amazing. I can't wait. I'll write soon.