So, here is the song if you dont get the title, Waka Waka
and here is the post if you dont get why i am talking about africa!
So Last weekend (ok two weekends ago because I suck at updating posts) I went to Morocco with a group of people from my Trip. We visited the cities Tangier, Tetuan and Chefchuan, and I probably spelled all of those incorrectly.
We had to be super careful not to eat certain foods (only vegetables that were cooked all the way through, only fruits we could peel. meat had to be cooked all the way through and absolutely no water. we had to shower with our mouths closed).
The super cheap sketch trip started with a change of names. My bff Carlos became Stefanie and I became Jessica...I also changed nationalities. I am now Canadian (p.s. when I return home I will only answer to the names Jess and Flower since I have made friends with the hippies here). Proof of my nationality/name change:
This is a picture from the market of the first city, Tetuan, We went to the market which is awesome but dirty and smelled horrid but that was the fun of it. There were places that would sell you live chickens or they would kill the chickens for you right there. There was fresh goat cheese for sale and tailors everywhere.
The second city was Tangier (tan-hair in spanish) and it was slightly less dirty. We rode camels!!! there was one that was tied to a tree away from the others and it was not happy. Well, said camel broke free and they had to chase it so I named him rogue camel and within 5 minutes all the people from the trip were saying rogue camel is rogue!
Then we went off to Chefchuan, my favorite city by far. It is painted all blue and in the mountains (which we climbed btw). It was fantastic and words cannot describe how pretty it is so here are some pictures:
Well that pretty much describes my trip to Morocco...nothing crazy happened and I avoided illness! woo!
As promised, here are the pictures of Cordoba and Sevilla:
Sevilla:
Does this (plaza de espana en sevilla)look familiar to any of our star wars fans? eh?
Cordoba:
And here is a picture of our wine when we were getting pintxos (tiny tapas from the basque region pronounced peen-chos) we were amused because of all the colors. Also, there is a man dressed as a tomato getting attacked by a kid with a water gun in front of the reina sofia museum of modern art (where picasso's guernica is held).
also, if you were wondering, waldo is on the metro in madrid!!
On my trip to Madrid with my friend Julie from the AIFS program, we stayed with my friend Kristen from Xavier who has been living and teaching English in Spain for a year. She was a fantastic tour guide and trip was amazing. On Saturday we saw all the mandatory Madrid sights and we did some tapas bar hopping, tried some wines and did some chupitos (tiny shots that have less alcohol than cough syrup...most of them were fruit flavored and had candy at the bottom and whipped cream on top : )) THen it was early to bed with us (midnight...which is when all the Spaniards START going out.) The only thing that went wrong was that we overslept the next day (through the alarm) because we hadn't gotten any sleep the night before on the horribly uncomfortable night bus from Granada to Madrid (arrival at 5:30 am, the metro was not even running yet). But because we overslept we didnt get a chance to go to Toledo. I am sure I will have sometime to go back at the end of my trip though...hopefully!!
Anyway, since we stayed in Madrid an extra day we had time to just walk around and relax. We checked out some local stores and we went to the Rastro, which is this huge market in the streets of Madrid on Sudays..I got a cool bangle with elerfants on it!! and Julie and Kristen got some pretty sweet Bangles too. We also went to this place to eat that was pretty chill. I got green tomatoes with goat cheese and black current jam. FABULOSO!! I will make it for anyone who wants it upon my return! hasta pronto,
welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends!
so lately i have been up to some fun!! First off, I have been super uber busy since the last post. La semana pasada I went to the Alhambra, the last moorish stronghold in Spain after the Catholic Monarchs decided to kill everything and everyone that wasn't Catholic...luckily they have changed a bit. The story goes something like this: so in the year 711 the Muslims came into the iberian peninsula and took over from the visigodos who were having internal power struggles and super duper high taxes. because of all the strife going on in the inside the Muslims had it pretty easy. It was a conquista super rapido and sin sangre (bloodless) here is why: They had horses because they are just badass like that and so they pretty much won if there was any fighting, which there was not much of because the Muslims were like hey you guys, you can totally worship whoever/whatever the heck you want, doesn't bother us...we are just going to tax you (which was lower than the super high taxes that the visigodos taxed anyway so it didnt really matter). however, if you are politheistic/ not people of some type of book we will have to kill you. and so it went everyone just chilling for a while...that is of course until the catholic monarchs decided that it was not cool to chill with people who are different because that is bad or something so they started killing people left and right who were not catholic...this went on for a while and in 1491 they got to the Alhambra ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnd the made a deal with the nazrid peeps on the inside and were like, hey man we wont kill you if you just surrender to our rule, and so they were like yeah sure that sounds pretty good to me, and the fernando and isabel were like majajaja we lied die!!!!! ok so maybe thats not EXACTLY how it went but its close!! so here are some sweet pics:
I also went to Generalife (the gardens and summer residence of the nazrid rulers, attached to the alhambra)so here are some pictures of that and a cat that i saw there that i have since named Gris...it is grey in spanish, not creative i know but when it is super hot and you are food/water deprived in seems like a good name.
after the alhambra and generalife i went to the beach called almunecar on the costa del sol...it was pretty so here is a picture of that too...just kidding...blogger is being slow beyond reason, so just imagine a rocky beach with water so clear you can see through it and a sun so bright that everyone went home either a crispy brown color or red as a lobster (i, however, found a happy medium)
This past weekend I went on an excursion to sevilla and cordoba que bonito!! in sevilla we went to visit a cathedral that was previously a mosque (kinda like all the cathedrals in spain) and this is a picture from the giralda (which means weather vane) but it is a catholic belltower that was added on top of the call to worship tower thing that is almost all that is left of the mosque...it is incredible on the inside...the alterpiece is about two tons of gold, making it the most expensive altar piece ever...the only bad thing about it is that it was made from gold that was earned during the inquisition...anyway i promise to put pictures of that up soon but they are still on my camera and the cable has disappeared...
next i went to cordoba. the cathedral here was once a mosque, although much much more of it is left than the one in sevilla. it is pretty much a church placed where they knocked down a bunch of the arcs in the mosque. one of the kings of spain came to visit when they were building it and he said "we are knocking down something very unusual in this world to build something that we can see every day." power to you man, but i do have to say that it is a very cool idea to have a church and a mosque in the same building. maybe there is hope for us yet...the artwork on both sides was amazingly beautiful, so for your entertainment, i will soon post pictures of that as well.
and that brings us to today. Tonight I have my first intercambio aka i meet with spanish students studying english and we all help each other with the language we want to learn...i will write more about it after the fact!
here is the newest member of my sheepie family. he has yet to be named, so give me your suggestions!! also, some pigs... XD
hasta pronto,
mj
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Hola again amigos y parientes (relatives),
I finally have some pictures so that you can see what I am seeing. Since the last post I have been up to a lot! I was supposed to have class today but because of the festivo (holiday) Corpus my professor was not here and we did not have my Islamic Culture in Spain Class and all classes after 14:00 were canceled anyway becuase of the holiday so I didn't have any of my Spanish classes either. For Corpus today there was a huge procession, or parade, that had a dragon, women wearing the gitano dress (what we know as flamenco, there were people wearing giant heads, a man dressed as a goblin on stilts, and the catholic and musilm monarchs. Even the little kids were dressed up! it was so adorable (see pictures below!)
There is a park very close to me called el Parque de Federico Garcia Lorca, that I believe I previously mentioned. It is beautiful, there are roses of every color and tons of different plants and fountains. There is even a little outdoor workout place that looks like a playground for adults. It is so cool, see the picture below to get a glimpse of this awesome park (it is only a two minute walk from my house and it has only been here for twelve years).
I also have a new cell phone to keep in touch with my group here since we are all scattered around the city. it was 12 euros, i didn't even know that phones came that cheap but that is awesome. The packaging is hilarious, and for your entertainment I have included photos. The translation of the words on the package are as follows: Give your personal information to the store. 1. Introduce the SIM card in the cell phone. 2. activate the cell phone by making a first call to whom you want. 3. And ready! Talk the same amount, pay less.
Also some random pictures: the first is the merienda (snack) that my senora made for me this afternoon. Man can she make a cup of coffee!
the second is how many plugs does it take to charge a laptop??!! the answer is 4!!
the third is a picture from my book because it said louisville, and i love my home!! XD
the last is a picture of my fantastic gelato. my flavors were frambuesa (raspberry) and mandarinetta (orange/madarin)
The first couple days have been insane and non-stop! We had an overnight flight to London, which, of course, was delayed for an hour and a half so we arrived late. And since there was a screaming baby on board the whole time none of the people in my area (aka the aifs kids on my flight) did not get a wink of sleep.
The first day in London we sought out a pub one of the boy's friends had informed him of then we went to Borough's and Camden Market, both of which are totally awesome in terms of people and food (tattoos piercings hippies and goths are just the start of camden market). Along the way we saw Southwark Cathedral, which was built in the 1200s. It is yellow and black rock brick stuff but overall I would say it is pretty cool.
After these markets was a drink and mingle at the hotel with all of Team Spain then off to bed at 8:00 because the only thing that separated us from being zombies was the craving for brains and other bits of human flesh and/or blood (but this last part about the cravings may not be true for everyone...)
Second day in London we awoke bright eyed and bushy tailed, almost over our jet lag, to embark upon a tour of London with a Scottish tour guide....yeah, that was my reaction too. The tour was cool and he told jokes that were not completely corny. There were a couple of hop-on-hop-off places for photo ops, including pictures of the millenium bridge (which gets blown up in the most recent Harry Potter movie) and St. Paul's Cathedral built by Sir Christopher Wren (as were most churches) after the great fire of 1666. I convinced one of the girls the last time we were here that the scaffolding that is on the church (in order to make restorations) is the original scaffolding used during the time of Sir Christopher Wren and when he died the left it there to honor him since the church remained unfinished. I know, the devil has just upgraded me to a jacuzzi sweet and a California King bed in hell...
We ended the day with a Jack the Ripper Tour and some Curry with free non-alcoholic beer....we were not so happy about that last part, but at least it was free. The Jack the Ripper tour was really intersting but there were no real visuals to make it scary. All of the sights had been torn down or built over. So if you have a vivid imagination, this tour would be great because the tour guide described in detail what had happened to all of the women. In detail.
The next morning we woke up super duper early but not quite so bright-eyed and bushy tailed, seeing as it was 3:00 AM....yes AM. We then set off for our Final Destination, and no this is not going to end in everyone dying in the order we sat on the plane. We arrived in Malaga then took a 2 hour bus ride to Granada to meet our Señoras.
My Señora is a petite lady we call Pepi who could kick the energizer bunny's ass in an energy competition. She hasn't stopped talking since we met her and she is fantastico. She picked us up from the bus stop, gave us a big hug and kisses on each cheek then led us back to her apartment near el Parque Federica Garcia Lorca, after the Spanish poet. Her apartment is small but awesome you can totally see her personality in her decorations of bright orange and pink. The table cloth is covered with smiling cat cartoons, my pillows have teddy bears on them and my roommate has the Simpson's sheets. for lunch we had some kind of meet with a hard boiled egg in the middle (it tasted a lot better than it sounded and looked) and salad with fresh tomatoes and sweet corn...que fantastico! we also had strawberries in milk...those had to have been the best strawberries I have ever eaten. And after a run down of the rules and stuff, we are having our siesta!
Oh, and did I mention we have a hermano whose name is Alejandro, he is 8, and a senor, whose name is Jose. We also have a dog and a parrot whose names I have yet to get correct...I think the dogs name is Chila.
The Spanish is overwhelming but I am understanding more than I thought I would! I tested into the fifth nivel (level) of Spanish out of eight and my classes begin tomorrow en la mañana. But seeing as there is a huge festival called Corpus in Granada which celebrates corpus christi, all afternoon classes and Thursday and Friday classes are called off. And that is how we do it in Spain. The siesta is fantástico. People think the Spanish are just lazy but it sucks to go out in the afternoon because it is around 90-100 degrees with no aire condicionado and so to avoid dying of heat stroke we sit out the hot hours and then go back to work. The sun does not set here until around 1030 so it is not like we are missing out on any sunlight either. I have yet to be burned by the scorching sun but I am betting that will change in the coming weeks....
