Call my crazy…no really, I felt like I was going insane

So!  After my amazing trip to Belgium with my wonderful friend Camille I jumped back into normal life, which consisted of correcting tests, celebrating Thanksgiving, and getting ready for my Christmas trip.  But first….I moved!  haha yea…turns out me and Spaniards don’t get along so well.  Our customs are just too different and there were a myriad of differences between the four of us.  Just to name a few, the boys were dirty, they were rude, up too late and too loud, and oh yea, smoked cigarettes and marijuana in the apartment.  So, needless to say, I got the heck outta there before Christmas so I’d be comfortable before I left and didn’t have to worry about all this when I got back.  Anyways, after much arguing with the landlord and forking over far too much cash, I am in my new apartment with much more agreeable roommates.  I’m now living with 3 other people, 1 Turkish Erasmus boy, 1 Irish teacher like me, and 1 British teacher like me!  So we’re much happier, have schedules that are very similar and have much more in common.  Oh yea, and I can be out in the kitchen without smelly cigarettes, pot or seeing flies from dirty dishes. While I am glad for the experience I had living with Spaniards, I decided it was time to move on, and that I will learn Spanish another way.  I have managed to make plenty of Spanish friends here so far, so I’m not too concerned.  I know it was an experience I was meant to have, so I’m glad I had it, but am ready to move onto a better living situation.

ANYWAYS!  After that debacle I’m finally in my new cozy apartment in my slightly smaller apartment, but much more agreeably one, and preparing for my Christmas Vacation!  And this year, it literally is a vacation.  I’m traveling!  I received a wonderful invitation from my good Peruvian friend Jessica, to spend Christmas with her and her sister in Munich, Germany this year.  As you can see, I’ve met quite a lot of interesting people here.  Jessica is working on her Master’s here and her sister is married and lives in Germany.  So since she’s here she’s taking advantage of the close distance and spending Christmas with her sister, and upon hearing that I had no where to go a couple months back she invited me to go with her!  So I’ve been spending the rest of my time preparing my trip.  Since I know so many amazing people I decided on a very basic itinerary for Christmas (compared to some auxiliaries itineraries which consist of visiting at least 5 different cities).  So I will be spending Christmas in Munich, moving along to Salzburg afterwards to spend the New Year, and finishing in Vienna to see Sophie again and stay with her gracious family!  I will return to Spain a day before I need to return to work, which begins on Jan 8! and will be a very happy person.  I feel very fortunate to have received this invitation because Christmas is such a family affair that I am so happy Jessica is willing to share her family with me.  In addition, I am very fortunate to only be paying for a place to stay in one of the three locations that I’ll be going to. 

Also!  I had a few other fun things happen to me, all which included cracking my computer screen and dropping my keys down the elevator shaft (hey, at least it wasn’t my phone!).  But at the end of two pretty hellish weeks I moved in and went to a school fundraiser for my 4ESO students who are planning a senior trip to Madrid in March.  It was a fundraiser to help them raise money to pay for the trip.  One of the teachers I work with, Reyes, helped the kids organize it, and since I’ve talked to her about it before I thought I’d go and support the kids and all her hard work.  Also, it was the first night of my vacation, so I thought, why not!?  This was quite fun and interesting because for starters, Spanish schools don’t really do things like this.  The sense of community and school dances don’t really exist here so it was really interesting to see how they put on something like that. Overall, the night consisted of the students selling sandwhiches and soda (none of that crap snack food you see at school dances) and they had a stage set up for the girls to dance an Arabian dance that they’re been learning from Reyes.  Reyes is a dance teacher to these students and takes multiple dance classes, so they wanted to show off their skills.  Also, at the beginning of the night Reyes told me they were going to play Just Dance, so I thought how cool that they have Just Dance! haha, they don’t.  Apparently you can look up Just Dance dances on youtube with the dance moves.  So they set up a projector and put youtube videos on the wall for the students to look at and dance to.  Reyes and I got in there and did some dance too.  Over all, it was really fun, but freezing cold.  There’s no such thing as an indoor gym, they have an outdoor patio where they hold everything.  So by 8:30 I was a little frozen and headed out while the rest of the students and Reyes were learning how to Salsa. haha, Only in Spain will you learn to salsa at a school dance, and not encounter any grinding or dark corners for the boys and girls to hide in.

A video of my kids dancing

 
The students looking at the screen to dance to Just Dance outside!  I even joined in a bit, much to my students delight.  haha I decided to make a bit of a fool of myself.
 
All of these girls are my students, and they danced so well.

Later that night I went to a pot luck Christmas party with all of my British coworkers and had a blast with them.  We were up till about 3 AM and then continued the party on Friday afternoon with a company lunch that went from about 2:30 to about 7.  We started off at the restaurant where we ate a ton of food, and drank a lot of wine and beer and then moved to the bar by about 7 and I ended my night by about 9:30 or so at night when I returned home.  It was a great day, full of really great fun memories and I feel really grateful and blessed to be able to work at Covent Garden because it has lead me to meet so many amazing, kind and fun young people just like me who love teaching and love Spain and learning Spanish.  So while I felt pretty under the weather for a week or so, this was a great way to wrap up my first full semester in Spain.  (Is it weird that I still think of my life in semesters? haha)


Till next time.  I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas if I can’t get to a computer while I’m gone! <3 <3 <3

The Land of Chocolate, Belgium

So last weekend I went to Belgium.  “Why?” you ask me, well….because it was cheap!  haha.  Me friend and I found a cheap flight to Belgium back in October for the weekend of Thanksgiving and we figured we’d go!  I had no idea what there was to see there, but little did I know that it was a hidden gold mine!  There’s actually a lot to see in Belgium and we spent almost all of our time out and about exploring all that Brussels, Brugge and Ghent had to offer.  Brussels is the capital of the European Union, so there’s a lot of international people there and pretty much everyone speaks English, which is really good because we don’t know Flemish, Dutch or German (all the languages they speak there).  On the plane we had an awesome person sitting with us though.  We met Pieterjan (PJ) on the plane and we spent the whole two hours talking with him about what we should see in Belgium, and talking about languages.  He even offered to show us around Brussels because he works there and had nothing to do that afternoon!  We were so excited that we’d have a local showing us around, but then we found out that we had different means of getting to the actual city and he could no longer come with us . :(  Camille and I flew into Charlatoi, which is an airport an hour outside of Brussels, but it’s much cheaper, so we had to take a shuttle bus into the city, and PJ was taking a train…traiter!…so we couldn’t meet up, but he did give us some great advice.  He told us to go to Gent, and Camille had never heard of it but I recently head about it so we said, okay! and worked it into our plans.  So we parted ways after the airport and headed into Brussels.  Unforunately, we couldn’t check into our hostel until almost 6:30, and since we arrived at 2:30, we had almost 4 hours to kill before we could go.  Luckily, Belgium is very organized and offers lockers in their train stations to store your things.  So we used a locker in the train station, locked away our backpack and suitcase and went out to explore Brussels!  We were actually able to see almost everything we wanted to see in Brussels in that afternoon, which is good because Saturday we planned on going to Brugge and Ghent all day. 

Me at the Grand Place (Main Square) in Brussels. 

 

We walked down this gallery where they sell some of the most expensive things in Brussels.  It has all the expensive chocolate stores, and clothing stores, it even had a postcard store!

 

And down the galleria we found this chocolate store.  Where apparently every piece of chocolate is good enough to have it’s own pedestal….

Then we decided to go find the Manneken Piss, the peeing boy!  Don’t ask me why there’s a statue of a boy peeing in Brussels, I’m pretty sure people don’t even know why he’s there, but he’s an anomoly and the locals take great pleasure in dressing up the peeing boy for the holidays and other occasions.  Unfortunately he was not dressed up for Christmas yet, although I’m pretty sure they do dress him up as Santa as it gets closer to Christmas.  Either way, we found our way to the peeing boy, and, I hate to say it, but I was quite underwhelmed.  It’s a very small statue, and it’s kind of just a regular statue.  It’s not made especially nicely, there’s no crazy architectual details that astonish me, he’s just a fountain of a boy made to look like he’s peeing into the pool of water that’s underneath the statue.  Maybe it’s just me, maybe I don’t appreciate the humor in it, or maybe he’s just that underwhelming.  

Either way, after that we wandered back to the Grand Place to see it all lit up and we found out that they have a winter light show that started later that evening, so we decided to collect our things and head back to the hostel.  Once we were settled and effectively offended the owner of the hostel by not using his wonderful crappy map, and asking if he has towels we headed out to eat dinner at one of his excellent outrageously priced recommended restaurants.  So we ended up at an Italian Restaurants and effectively offended them by asking about the price of water and then walked out.  So THEN we ended up at yet another overpriced but more accommodating Asian restaurant where I had my first real Thai food.  It wasn’t bad, but it certainly didn’t fill me.  After an evening full of frustrating at finding decently priced, good food in this city of overpriced things, we headed back to the city center to see the Grand Place light show!  Oh my goodness was it worth it!
It’s a light show was amazing and is a light and music show where it tells the history of Belgium through classical music and they light up all the buildings in city hall.  It’s amazing and certainly worth standing outside in the freezing cold.  It was so good that we actually went back the following night to watch it two more times because Friday night we spent it taking photos and videos, so we wanted to enjoy it better.  Then we ended up eating our waffles the whole time, so we sat and waited another 15 min or so to see it again.  It was playing from 5:30 to 10:30 all night long every 30 min but lasted 15 min so it essentially was playing every 15 minutes. haha.  We felt very lucky because if we weren’t in Brussels during the Christmas season I’m not sure if they would actually have this show, I’m pretty sure it’s only a seasonal thing, so we felt very fortunate. 

But then that was pretty much all the time we spent in Brussels.  Sunday before we left we went to see the Atomium, a giant atom magnified like 650 billion times, that was created in the 1958 for a conference that was held in Belgium.  When the guy built it he believed that atomic research was going to save the world and make great advances, and it did, but it certainly hasn’t been the saving grace that I think he hoped for.  So that was really cool to see, but we didn’t go inside it like we wanted to because we were more interested in seeing the world’s largest collection of instruments at the Music Museum they have there.  The Music Museum was also really cool and totally worth our Sunday morning before we headed back to Huelva.

  Some cool instruments from Africa I think

This one is the instrument of the month!

Really pretty harmonica from Italy

On Saturday we spent the day outside of Brussels, much to our hostel owners dismay, exploring the beautiful cities of Brugge and Ghent at the recommendation of our friend PJ from the plane.  I’m so happy we did because it was 100% worth being outside of Brussels away from the metropolitan feeling.  The next blog post will be what we did in Brugge and Ghent!

Me at the beautiful light show

Malaga, I love you

So even thought I went to Málaga a long time ago I should at least write about the basics of my trip.  Basically, so far it was one of my favorite trips, although every trip is fantastic in a different way! This trip was fantastic because I got to spend time with my favorite Spainards!  Maria and Manolo, my two good friends from Granada when I studied abroad there.  :)  They allowed me to show up late on Thursday evening so we should have plenty of time on Friday and Saturday to explore the city and do many things.  I’m so grateful to them for hosting me and letting me sleep on their sofa-cama (futon) for the weekend and for showing me all the great places in Malaga to see and to eat.  I ate wonderful seafood, and other yummy foods, and they showed me all the greatest views in Malaga.  :)

Thursday night I arrived, we ate some dinner at the mall, and then met some of their British friends for their intercambio.  It was fun and nice to see that they are able to keep up with their English, even thought their English is better than my Spanish will ever be.  They are truely inspirational people for me, because if they can learn English as well as they did, and watch t.v and listen to the radio all in English most of the time, then I should be able to do the same, and I should certainly try harder.  Then Friday, they went to work and I stayed home and slept in and after they came home from work we went downtown to check out the downtown Malaga.  The city center is absolutely gorgeous, and so much bigger than the center in Huelva!  Although that doesn’t surprise me at all, haha.  I think most city centers are going to be bigger than Huelva’s, except for many the pueblo’s city centers, haha.  Anyways, it was gorgeous, and we got some dinnfer at a nice restaurante downtown, and they showed me around.  We saw the beautiful Cathedral by night, we saw the old roman forum but night and the Alcazaba as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

Cathedral

 

We even found a giant pair of 3D sunglasses in Plaza de la Merced.  It was a promotion for discounts at movies in Malaga at certain theatres, but the giant red sunglasses were pretty cool!  Oh yea!  And I went to Pimpi’s, a famous British bar in Malaga, and there’s been all sorts of famous people who have visited the restaurant.  It’s actually really cool, and it’s huge on the inside with old posters advertising for bull fights, movies, flamenco shows, and then pictures of all the famous people who have visited the restaurant.  I’m really not even sure why it’s famous, I just know that it is.  It was cool though!

Saturday we took advantage the nice weather and Maria and Manolo took me to climb alongside the Alcazaba to see a great view of Malaga.  I actually don’t know anything about the Alcazaba, why it’s there or when it got there, because I didn’t do anything touristy, while I was in Malaga.  If I return I def am going to go to the Picasso Museum and enter the Alcazba so I can see the old Roman Forum better.  But what we did was also really cool (both as in it was awesome and it was chilly!  It started to get cold in Malaga when I went!)

 

The old Roman Forum in front of the Alcazaba

 

At the top of the view, and yes, that’s the beautiful ocean in the background.  It was amazing

Maria, Manolo and Me at the top.  My two favorite Spainards!

And of course I entered the Cathedral in Malaga, what Cathedral don’t I enter!  It was really pretty inside, and had probably one of the most beautiful tabernacles that I’ve ever seen. 

Sunday we went down to the beach and walked along the shore for a bit, and I even saw some people sun bathing!  And that’s pretty much everything I did.  It was a really relaxing weekend with them.  We drove around in the car ( :D I miss driving around in a car) and ate really amazing food, and drank a lot of wine. It was an incredible weekend and I’m so grateful that my friends showed me around their beautiful new home.  Hey, maybe next year I’ll live in Malaga, that’d be cool.  :D

 

Life at School

So I know that for the most part I’ve been posting about my travels, so I thought I’d make a post about some things that are going on at school and some differences there are between high school here and high school in the U.S.  Since I’m teaching at an Instituto, which is basically a high school I’ve noticed a couple differences that are neither good, nor bad, just differences.  Some I could live with, other’s I’d much rather live without.

1.) RECESS

Yup, kids get recess, no matter how old you are, these kids get recess, here’s it’s called recreo.  But it is a bit different.  It’s 30 solid minutes where the kids are set up loose on the playground, basketball, fenced in area.  They are all allowed to be outside and eat a snack, what they call breakfast, and just chat and hang out.  In theory it’s great, and then you realized that they aren’t allowed inside during this time, and if it’s cold they have to stay out there…that sucks. 

Also, the teachers get recess! Yup, we get recess.  They set the whole school of kids outside and then the teachers leave.  Yup, they leave.  haha, it’s actually encouraged that you get out of the building, go grab some desayuno at the closest bar and chat with your fellow teachers.  It’s totally cultural here, you go out, grab a seat at your daily bar, get some toast, coffee, tea or any other preference of a drink and chat away.  And the best part is, it’s mostly not school gossip, they are friends and they just talk about their lives, what they did on the weekend or pick up the weekly magazine and talk about the styles are are in the magazine, and who looks good with what outfits.  It’s actually quite fun, and it’s considered strange if you don’t go out for something to build your relationships with the other teachers.  Because we don’t have a cafeteria at school the teachers have to go out, or some bring a small sandwich to school, but going out is better and way more fun.

2.) CUBBIES

I taught my coordinator this word the other day when I told her she can grab my materials from the cubby if she wanted to use them.  She looked at me kind of strange and ask what I just said and I told her I called my little boxed locker a cubby, and that’s what I called them in school when I was younger, and we still call them cubbies.  Anyways, teaches have cubbies and the students stay in their classroom.  So the teachers have to keep all their stuff in a tiny cubby with their name on it and run back and forth between the staff room and their classroom every period.  The teachers move.  This is something I could do without, because I like the idea of having my own classroom.  It also saves a lot of time if you’re not always switching classrooms and having to bring up anything you want to bring up on the computer.

But for now, this is how things are, and I’m getting accustomed to having a cubby.  And I got to put my name one it.  Mostly I did it so big because everyone still calls me Jenny, even though that’s clearly not my name.  The last auxiliary was named Jenny and apparently my name is just too close to that and my name is too hard for some Spainards. :/

 

 

3. ) IF YOU’RE WRONG, YOU’RE WRONG, NO SUGAR COATING IT

At first I was very unnerved when the teachers would tell the students “no, that’s bad/wrong” and then move on.  Or when they yelled at them multiple times and said “pay attention you lazy boy, stop fooling around, do you even care?”  All of these things said in front of the whole class while the student just looked at them.  The teacher would stand there and yell at a whole class saying “why don’t you get it?” “listen to me!” or “no, that’s wrong, you need to try harder”.  If a teacher said these words to a student, much less in front of the whole class, in the U.S. we’d be yelled at by the parents for humiliating their child in front of the whole class and making them feel bad.  Here, it’s the opposite.  If the student is wrong they are wrong, and they don’t sugar coat it.  And the students don’t even blink.  This is just the way it is and they take it and say “okay, I’ll change my answer” or “okay” and start paying attention.  There’s none of this stupid feel good nonsense here in Spain.  This is something I could get used to. haha

4.) I HAVE NO MORE CLASSES TO TEACH TODAY, SEE YA!

And it works the other way around too!  If you don’t have class or anything to do until 10:30, you don’t have to show up until before then!  Yup, so the teachers just come and go all day long, some come in later, some leave earlier, and it’s just all together very strange.  For example, on Thursday’s I have a prep class with one of my teachers that I work with, but it’s not until 10:15, and she doesn’t have anything before that, so she literally just shows up about 5 min before 10:15, or sometimes even 15 later, because she can!  And other days I don’t ever see my coordinator because she comes in after I leave, or leaves before I finish my day.  It’s so strange, but I’m not hating it.

So those are the main things that are different in the schools here.  None of which are big problems, and some of them I could live with.  Like not showing up at least 30 min early at 7AM and staying until schools out, and being encouraged to leave school in the middle of the day for coffee.  But there are things I definitely like better about school life at home.  All in all, every day introduces new challenges and gives me insight into the different lives that people lead here, that I guess I lead here now….

Until next post, love you all. <3

Granada, returning home!

I finally returned to Granada! Yup, about 1 year and a half ago I studied in Granada and left a little piece of my heart there when I left.  The city had me in love with Spain in just a few shorts weeks of me being there.  And when I left I told myself I would go back one day, and I looked for a way back for a long time.  It took me two summers and living in a different city, but I did it!  And you can bet that when I returned it was the most glorious moment ever and I was grinning from ear to ear like a little child.  We arrived Thursday evening after about 4 hours on the bus from Sevilla and found our wonderful hostel (handpicked my me) which was located right in the heart of the city. And since we were hungry and weren’t quite sure where to go my friends decided to trust me and I took them to a place I remembered for having good tapas and a good atmosphere.  It was a little bit strange being back in the restaurant because I actually spent my last night in Spain at that restaurant and to spend my first night back in Granada there was a little like I never left.  It was a very strange and surreal feeling to be sitting in the bar at a table I sat at often, but over a year later, with different people, in different circumstances and only for a weekend.  It was all strange.  But the food was just as good as I remembered, if not better since I actually tried most of it, I’ve gotten more adventurous since the fist time I was in Granada.  :)  Later that night we went to a teteria (tea house) since they are the best in Granada with all the Arab influence.  We hung out late until late into the night and decided to head back by 1 to get ready for our day full of adventures!  We had a whole weekend and needed to fill it with everything there is to do!

So after out first night out we decided to hit the hay and get rested up for our “free” tour of the Albayzin on Friday!  We met up with Camille and then met the guy who gives the tours.  Hostels do great things where they give “free” tours to it’s guests and then at the end you give a good tip/pay them after the tour is over.  Our tour guide was quite funny and told stories about how the Alhambra got into the hands of the Catholic Kinds and the history of the city using people in our tour.  He had some people being the king of one country or another and then one was a queen or someone.  He told stories and acted things out and showed us cool things, like how the design of La Alhambra looks like the word written out.  It’s really brilliant and cool, and I didn’t even know that the whole time I lived there!  The guy took us around the Albyzin and told us about how it’s actually losing a lot of it’s residents because the amount of money it costs to live there is astronomical.  Apparently it’s under preservation because it’s a historical area of Granada, and because it brings so many tourists there are requirements to keep the outside of your house looking fresh and clean.  But if you don’t have the money to keep it looking like that, they you can actually lose your house.  Also, there’s no stores or anything up there because they don’t really give building permits, so you have to either walk all the way to the city center to get your groceries and other things, or you have to pay someone (if you’re older) to go out and get the things for you and deliver them to your house.  And not a lot of cars can fit through the roads, and you can only drive on certain roads.  Basically, living there is a mess, and while it’s sounds great, in reality it’s not so great.  The views are nice, but the living conditions and expenses aren’t so nice.  So it’s kind of a shame to walk through and see how some houses have been abandoned by owners because they can’t afford to live there and keep their house looking nice for the tourists.

Anyways, we walked through the Albyzin, and saw some incredible views, and then ended up at the Miradaor de San Nicolas which is the famous view point that all tourists visit.  And from there our tour guide dropped us off without even telling us how to get out…..thanks.  Luckily it’s not that hard, you honestly just find a route and walk down, since the Albyzin is up on a hill, just walk down and eventually you’ll get out.  It’s a long walk, but it’s worth it, and you get to see a different part of the Albyzin while you walk out.  The mirador was crowded as usual, and the sun was really bright so it was hard to get good pictures of the Alhambra, plus it was cloudy so you couldn’t see the beautiful mountains.  But all in all it was well worth the time we spent there taking pictures and adoring the wonderful piece of undisturbed history. There was never a war or battle fought in Granada, that’s the only reason that the Alhambra is still standing….also it’s not a world wonder (even though it should be) because the people who decide these things said that when one of the kinds built a huge palace in the middle it ruined the rest of the view.  Now it’s true, it doesn’t match the rest of the fortress, but seriously!?  That’s like saying the Pyramids aren’t a world wonder because some idiot built a tower next to it hundreds of years ago…. dumb.

Here’s some pictures from the way up to the mirador and when we got there.

 

All of us together up at the top of the Mirador.  That’s the Alhambra behind us, and you can almost see them Sierra Nevada if you look in the background near the sky

Me at the mirador!

 Inside a beautiful private garden in the Albyzin. 

Inside an old Arabic bath house

After we walked up to the mirador, I went to lunch with my host mom from about a year ago!  You know how you build things up in your mind, then they’re not as awesome because you build them up….yea, that happened.  She was just as I remembered, and everything was the same, but two different strange girls were sleeping in my bed and I remembered how much time I spent there.  Then the food wasn’t as great because I built it up in my head, but it was still really good, don’t get me wrong.  Also, for some reason Julia kept calling me Jenny…..  Julia told me that one time before another girl returned to do the same thing I’m doing, and I think her name was Jenny.  So I think she just had that name in her head, and I just let it go and let her call me Jenny, it was close enough.  But it was sad because I kept thinking it was going to be this great moment, but it was and it wasn’t.  lol.  It was really nice to see her again, but I think I’ll pass the next time I’m in Granada. 

Then I was able to meet up with my friends from Granada, my intercambio friends who I met with once a week when I lived there!  They were in Granada for the weekend as well so I brought all my friends along and we met up and went out for some tapas.  It was awesome and I was so excited to meet with them, especially since I had plans to go down to see them in Malaga the following weekend.  It was a preamptive meet up and we got all out giggles and screams of joy out. :) So that’s me and Maria and Manolo, Manolo makes really weird faces when he smiles, haha.  He’s like Chandler in friends, he just can’t do it for a picture.  But it was a really fun night, they took us to a nice place for tapas and they met all my friends. :)

The rest of the weekend flew by.  On Saturday I went with Camille, and her friends from Italy that she made last year, to the Parque de las Ciencias.  Jess and Sarah went to the Alhambra, and since I had already been, and Camille and I couldn’t get tickets, we decided to spent the day, or at least part of the day, at the Science park.  yes it’s a park, there’s a lot to do and it’s awesome.  I didn’t stay the whole day though, only until Sarah and Jessica got out of the Alhambra tour, so after that I headed out to lunch with them where I spent an astronomical amount on lunch because we ate so much.  And then we went exploring did some shopping and over all rested for the rest of the evening.  We were exhausted from the past two days of running around and site seeing, so we ended up being lame, and just went out for Kebaps for dinner and then went back to the room for an early night.  But Sunday we woke up early to check out and go explore the graffiti that’s all over Granada and in the Jewish Quarter, and to see the coffins of the Catholic Kings and their family.  It was awesome, I’d seen them once before but like a long time ago and didn’t really remember.  So we went during the hours when it’s free and it was awesome!  Also, the graffiti is really cool, it’s not like gang graffiti back home, it is just beautiful art that happens to be on the street walls.  Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the chapel where the Catholic Kings are, because it’s disrespectful to them and all, but I have pictures of the graffitti.

Oh yea, we went into the Cathedral on Friday to see the gorgeous and huge Cathedral.

Outside the Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral

So that was my weekend in Granada.  I took a lot of pictures, did a lot of things and smiled a lot.  I can’t wait to go back with my parents in April.  :) 

Next post, Malaga!  Where I spent the weekend with two wonderful Spainards who were so accommodating and nice to me, and showed me the beautiful city that they live in now.  Until next post, love you!

A day out with Spainards!

I finally got some time to go out and explore the towns outside of Huelva, in the province.  Some of these towns aren’t too easy to get to without a car because the bus schedule is terrible, with having only one bus out in the morning, or having a few buses but with times tables that only give you about 2-3 hours in the town.  While granted, you don’t really need that much time in the small towns, it’s still nice to have a little bit more time to explore and not having to rush right now.  So, I was blessed with the invitation from my coordinator Belén, to come out with her one Saturday and go explore some stuff with her and her friend Rafa.  So, a couple Saturday’s ago me and my friend Camille got ready to head out “early” at 11 to go see some cool local things with Belen and Rafa.  Yea…leaving to go out for the day at 11 is apparently early for Spainards.  When we were leaving the Dolmen de Soto I commented about how many people were there now, at around 1:30 and Belen goes “yea, well Spainards don’t like to get up early, we left early”.  hahahaha okay, if you say so. 

So what did I do with my day!?  First, we went to the Dolmen de Soto which is in a little town called Triago (I think?).  Apparently there are 200 Dolmen’s in the province of Huelva. And they are essentially underground burial chambers that have been found.  They are under a little hump of ground, kind of looks like a small hill, but it’s circular and clearly very calculated.  Usually when they find the, they find bodies, and drawings all over the stones to depict what’s inside of them.  It was really cool, and in this one, they found a woman and 2 children’s bodies, and the drawings on the rocks depicted women, and stars and other cool stuff. They are pretty small, and not very deep, but there’s rocks that form the chamber, so it’s really interesting to think about how they got these really big rocks standing up and how they form a ceiling and everything.  It’s kind of like Stonehenge, but not really, and it’s underground.  The big rocks are arranged in a way that it forms a small hallway that leads to a “large” (relative to the rest of the space) area where the bodies were found curled up in the fetal position. 

So the first picture is the entrance, the second is the “hallway” sort of thing that we walked through, the third is the large main chamber area and the last picture is of one of the drawings that was on the rocks.  I think it’s supposed to be the symbol for a woman, but I’m not quite sure.

Oh, also, when we went to this tour of the Dolmen de Soto (which was free and amazing) we saw our dear friend who gave us the haunted tour!  It was really funny, because Camille and I were just standing around waiting for the tour to start, and all of a sudden some guy walked up really close to Camille and said “do you remember me?!”  It took both of us a minute to process what he said, becuase of course it was in pretty fast Spanish, then we stared at him and went “OOOOOOHHHH” to which he laughed and said “yea, I don’t have face paint on so I look different”.  Then he proceeded to explain to the group of people who were now staring at us why how he knew us and laughed about how he saw us the other night as well.  It was really a fun experience and we realized that he works for this company that held the two events we went to.  We wanted to get a picture with our new friend after the tour, but he was in middle of his own tour when we finished, so we couldn’t get a picture.  Hopefully next time we go to an event sponsored by this company we’ll see him again and become excellent friends! haha

Next stop, El Rocio!  Now, this city is gorgeous and very different from any other place I’ve been to in Spain.  El Rocio is actually very famous in Huelva Province, and pretty famous in all of Andalucia because of the uniquness of their town and the feria that they have on Pentecost Sunday.  El Rocio is a very small town with very few residents and a lot of visitors.  They are mostly famous for the wild horses that they have, because there are very big wet lands.  When we went we could actually see the horses, which is rare because if there’s not a lot of water they are out further.  But it’s been a pretty wet fall so there was enough water to see the horses from a far.  It was really cool!  El Rocio is also famous for the feria they have on Pentecost Sunday, when they carry La Virgin del Rocio through the streets.  The Cathedral there is absolutely gorgeous, and when we went inside La Virgin del Rocio also happened to be there!  Apparently she doesn’t live in Rocio, she lives in Almonte, so she’s not always in El Rocio.  That explains why there were so many people visiting the Cathedral that day, and why it’s such a big deal.  Let me tell you, it is a gorgeous statue!  It’s pure white, and there’s not words to express how pretty it is.  The figures around the statue are obviously part of the church itself and the statue is on a platform that sticks out.  Also, apparently it’s really well guarded because one day someone stole it to start the procession early or something like that.  I was explained all of this in Spanish so I might have misunderstood some things, but I’m also positive that she’s well guarded for that reason.  It wasn’t a malicious robbery, just something that shouldn’t have happened. 

Oh yea, and did I mention that Pope John Paul II celebrated mass here one time! Yup, JPII celebrated a mass, and seeing as I love JPII, I was psyched when I found out.  They have a plaque on the inside of the church that explains when he came to El Rocio, in 1993, and they also have a plaque on the outside of the church, that depicts him kneeling in prayer, on the balcony where he celebrated mass.  It was so cool!  They also have a bust of his head on the boardwalk type area where you can see the wild horses.  Basically I was really excited.  The church was gorgeous and La Imagen de Nuestra Señora del Rocío is so beautiful that I could have spent so much more time in that church than I did.  I’ll put pictures in a photo album so you can see more of them.  There’s too many photos I want to share of this adorable pueblo than I can fit on here. 

Oh yea, and did I mention that the whole town is covered in sand….yup.  All the streets are made up of sand, and they have posts outside of houses and stores to tie up your horse.  And during the Feria you’re not allowed to have a car, only horses and carriages are allowed on the street.  If you live in Rocio you have to have a special permit to park somewhere else during the week of Feria, and in general families are only allowed one car in the town.  Yea, it’s pretty awesome, but it makes for messy shoes when you leave, shoes full of sand. 

So our last stop was in Niebla, after having eaten the most delicious spinach croquetas ever in Almonte.  Belen and Rafa took us to Niebla for the Medieval fair that they were having, which was like 10x better than the little fair that was in Huelva.  While I wish I could have been at the fair all day rather than just a few hours, it was still so much fun.  Niebla has an actual castle that you can go and visit.  And while it’s mostly ruins, it was still really cool to see.  They had events going on inside the castle, so we paid for the entrance and walked around and on the walls of a super old castle where battles were probably fought and where noble people walked.  It was awesome.  Then, outside of the castle there were little vendors selling chachki’s and sweets and crepes and all the things I wish I could buy.  Also, there was a cute old church that was pretty much destroyed by the great Lisbon earthquake that pretty much destroyed everything in it’s vacinity.  A lot of Portugal and a lot of the region in Andalucia where I live had really big damage done to it.  So when Belen and Rafa took Camille and I to see the old church it was missing….pretty much everything, haha.  There were no walls, no ceiling, just a remnant of what once a doorway, and then the space where the alter should have been, where there was a cross and some pieces of the building left.  It was actually really cool the way they preserved it.  Niebla doesn’t have too much to offer other than the castle and the old church, but it was a cute town and I had a lot of fun.  Camille is a great photographer so we spent a lot of time just taking pictures and taking in the scenery. 

 

Overall, the day was really great, it I was so tired by the end.  I’m so happy I was able to spend some time away from Huelva and also spend some time with my coordinator.  She was so nice to offer me and Camille to go with her, and I need to find a way to repay her some day for her kindness.  Till my next post, on Granada!  Much love. <3 Besos

 

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Full of Apologies

So now it’s time for me to say I’M SORRY WORLD! I have totally let time pass without my noticing that it’s been almost a month since I posted an update. Since my last update a number of things have happened, which included Halloween, a day trip to some surrounding towns in the Province and a trip to Granada.  Oh, also, in that time I’ve officially booked all I need for Christmas traveling. :) But I’ll give you a recap little by little, I’ll post a little bit each day to keep you in the loop until I’m caught up. 

Halloween!  Yea….that’s not so hot here in Spain, it was really disappointing.  In college I really got into the Halloween spirit because my friends and roommate got into the spirit and decorated, while we searched for the best costumes starting when we arrived in August.  Yup!  We thought about it that early, haha.  But here in Spain it was a little lot different.  For starters, no one really seems to care about Halloween until literally like 3 days before.  At the start of October I tried to look in the stores for some Halloween things and found minimal options.  So I decided to wait a bit and looked again around mid- October, when you would think it is perfectly reasonable to start putting costumes out, FALSE!  For Spainards it’s not important, actually, many of them really despise Halloween and the older generation really hates it because they think they are becoming to Americanized.  It’s viewed as a very American holiday and the older generations want nothing to do with it.  But the younger generation is starting to grow up with it and have gotten into the spirit of dressing up.  And that’s what leads me to different number 2.

Difference number 2: Dressing up for Halloween does not mean finding cute, sexy or witty costumes.  It means finding a shirt that you can rip up, finding some fake blood and smearing it all over you wherever you think it looks best.  You want to be a vampire for Halloween?  Perfect.  Zombie?  Excellent.  Person who just died?  Great!  But if you want to be Abraham Lincoln you better go find some fake blood and put that on your body somewhere!  You want to be a bride?  Great, now just smear some blood on your veil, put some red lipstick on, and you’ve got yourself a great Spainish costume.  But wearing cat ears or dressing up as a minion won’t cut it, you’ll look strange and American.  You’ve gotta have blood somewhere on your costume if you’re gonna do it the Spanish way!  Or, you can be a witch, just like all the other people who don’t know what to do.  Buy yourself a witch hat and a broom and you fit right in, and you don’t even have to buy fake blood to wear that costume!

But the private academy I work at had a cute Halloween party for the kids.  Now remember how I don’t do kids very well….yea….it went just as I expected it to.  I volunteered to help out and ending up making pasta to dig for candy through “worms” and somehow ended up in the room with the kids who wanted to play games, so I had to entertain them and think of ways to not keep them from getting bored. Luckily Sarah was in there because I was losing my brain and had no idea what to do with the children.  I had a plan, and when that plan didn’t work my brain turned off.  But Sarah came to the rescue since she works at an elementary school here and she figured out how to keep them busy for an hour or so.  Boy was I glad when that hour was over!  But we told the acadamy about wrap the mummy and they seemed really excited about letting the kids wrap each other up in toilet paper.  However, since it’s run by British people who have apparently never heard of this game, they had no concept of how much toilet paper you need for this activity.  Upon hearing that you need a lot of toilet paper I was reassured that “yea, we have plenty!” and then followed my coworker into the bathroom where she pulled out about 4-6 rolls of toilet paper and said, “that’s enough, right?” hahahaha, nope!  But seeing as you don’t seem to want to buy more, we’ll see what we can do with what we have.  Well, needless to say the kids used all the rolls up in one round because who doesn’t want to help wrap someone up in toilet paper!  While it wasn’t a complete success, it wasn’t a complete failure either.  And the kids loved playing with all the toilet paper that was left on the ground anyways.  So all in all the party was a success. We just really acted as chaparones while the kids kind of went crazy and threw the toilet paper around the room for a good 30 minutes. 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

Either way, the kids loved it, and then after my students finished their exams we were able to celebrate Halloween in the classroom.  We read a scary story that I found online from “Scary Stories to tell your friends in the dark” from when I was a kid!  They loved the story and then we did other Halloween educational activities.  It was all in all pretty good. 

Oh yea!  I went on a Haunted tour through Huelva.  Apparently there’s some houses in Huelva that are haunted, so we found this tour on a website used to find out about local events and stuff, so me and my friend Camille went and signed up.  It turned out to be really fun, despite the fact that it lasted almost 3 hours.  The guy that lead the tour was hilarious, and once we realized that we were from the U.S. got all excited and would ask us some questions while telling his stories about if we celebrate things a certain way, or how to say things in English.  It was a really funny tour, and then we saw him the next night when we were out getting tapas with a friend.  He was leading another tour group and he recognized us!  It was really funny, but it was fun to see a familiar face and start to see how familiar faces become around Huelva.  At the end of the tour we ended up at a “real” haunted house in Huelva and entered it with nothing a candle (cue scary bum bum bum music!).  I turns out that it’s the building for youth here in Huelva that I’ve been to before, so I wasn’t scared, and nothing happened.  But it was a bit of fun to be with some odd Spainards and share some scary stories on Halloween night.  If I wasn’t going to go out and be at a party all dressed up then I was at least going to spend the night doing something Halloweeny.  It was fun, but I didn’t grab any pictures, sorry guys!  It’s just in my memory. 

So that’s all for now!  Another update on my trip to Niebla, El Rocio, and the Dolmen de Soto with my coordinator to come!

Much love! <3