Thursday, March 11, 2010

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.

3 comments:

  1. Nice blog mija! Hope to talk to you soon. Have fun in Granada!

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  2. megan! haha that was a long post! but interesting. so that's awesome that you're learning to cook paella! We'll have to take turns cooking dinner for the townhouse cuz i'm learning how to cook costa rican delicious food too!miss you!

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  3. It's been a long time since I cooked paella. I sold my paella pan years ago - can you get a new one? Not a huge one... I look forward to eating your paella this summer (at some point anyway).

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