WARNING: long blog post.......

Hello everyone! I'm back from my week-long trip to southern Spain, and I have a TON to tell you! As a preface to my tales, I'd like to say that Spain is Wonderful and I'm often totally caught off guard by how beautiful the things we get to see are (as you'll see in this post) and I feel SOOOOO grateful that I get to be here :)

so...

First off, we stopped at La Mancha--what's that from...anybody? anybody?? yep, Don Quixote's home town :) so of course we stopped by the windmills and castle for pictures and to read the famous part of the book where Quixote battles it out with the windmills, much to Sancho Panza's distress.



ya, I like this last one too :)
Also, at the castle at La Mancha, we of course had to have photo shoots, but also video shoots. This is my friend Robby doing a little Jason Bourne action--he thought he was so cool until he twisted his ankle :) Jovencito.....



Finally, about five hours after taking off from from Alcala, we reached Cordoba. Just as a little history for everyone, the Arabs controlled Spain for about 800 years before the reign of the Catholic Kings--this means that there is a ton of architecture left behind from them, mostly in the south since they came from Africa. So heres some pictures from Cordoba:



This is a really famous street in Cordoba where everybody takes pictures, so I did too...




Then we went to Seville! This place is also big in Arabic/Spanish history not to mention it's gorgeous! We first went to the Real Alcazar palace where they have awesome buildings but the real prize winner is the gardens--I thought for sure I had walked into a rain forest!



Also, in the south, but especially in Seville, there are orange trees lining the streets--I kid you not. They're EVERYWHERE! Unfortunaly they're all pretty green this time of year, but I did find one that had some orange oranges:


Between Cordoba and Seville, we stopped at Madinat al-Zahra, or at least its ruins. There's a lot of history to it--a massive city built b the Caliph Abd al-Rahman III and sacked by I think the Christians, and not redescovered until 1911. You should look it up :)


Also in Seville, the HUMONGO Catedral de Maria

And the Plaza de Espana, where supposudly some scene from some Star Wars episode was filmed...you'll have to tell me if you can figure it out.


But the best part of Seville (and probably the whole trip) was the Flamenco show we went to! I was AMAZED at how awesome it was! It's like a combination of tap, ballet, ballroom, and modern (at least how I see it), and it is pure, uncontained emotion that I loved!!! You would have LOVED it! I took video of every performance, and someday i'll have good enough internet to load it...





The last stop was Granada where we saw The Alhambra which consisted of the Palacio de Carlos V and Generalife (gardens of the palace). This place was really cool to, and when I say gardens of palaces, I mean miles and miles and miles of trees, flowers, waterfalls, ponds, birds, etc. etc. etc. It was gorgeous! When we first got there, the professors told us we had 5 hours to look around, and I thought they were crazy--but it almost wasn't enough time! I wish I could post more pictures, but my camera kind of died, so google it!



Best Ice Cream of my LIFE!!!

So this is Spain...

Hello Everyone!!!!
Sorry it's been FOREVER since I last posted...
To catch you up, i'm going to just throw alot of random happenings at you:

I've set my travel plans for after the program. We're going to Rome, then London, Ireland, then Scotland. We've found some pretty sweet plane ticket prices, and have bought 3 already--now we're just waiting for the next ryair sale to buy the other two. Thanks for all the advice about where to travel--I took everything into consideration and made plans based on what I wanted to do, and i'm REALLY excited/pleased about my decision :)

Also, people have been asking me, "has it dawned on you ÿet that you're actually in Spain?" The answer to this question is YES. And some days the answer is HECK YES. Here's my top 10--you know you're in Spain when:

1. Old ladies walk around the town, dressed up in their nicest dress suits, arm in arm.
2. You can hardly fit in the bathrooms because they're soooo small.
3. There's no drinking fountains anywhere.
4. There is some sort of festival going on every week. In Spain, its always time to party!
5. Dogs everywhere. Dog poop everywhere.
6. The supermarkets dedicate whole isles to white, bottled asparagus and digestive cookies.
7. Pepper is the spiciest thing available for your food--in fact when you put a fair amount of it on anything, people look at you like you're superman.
8. Personal space is disregarded. At first this is strange, but then you realize it's actually really great. I've never seen so much affection between kids and their parents in the middle of the street or at the store. Hugs and Kisses all around!
9. Sanitation is a little weird. When you go to the supermarket, you have to where plastic gloves to handle the fruit and vegtables, and they wash the streets with these weird cars and people carrying hoses everyday. However, when you go to a restraunt or even to fast food, they are using their bare hands to cook and handle money at the same time. Not to mention the dog poop everywhere...
10. Everyone listens to American music. One day we were sitting on the bus coming home, and two other girls sat next to us. When they saw that we spoke english they asked us where we were from and then pulled out their cell phone to have us listen to their favorite American song:
Destiny's Child--Say My Name. Ya....They're a little behind, but I dig the fact that we get to listen to Rod Stewart and Queen from the bus radio on the way to school.


Last night we went to a medieval festival here in Alcala. It was HUGE! I ate some really weird food, but it was really good! The shops lined the whole main street and branched off into two plazas and more side streets. (For those of you unfamiliar with Alcala--just know thats really big.)

Markets are pretty cool in general--they're the best places to buy jewelry, scarfs, tableclothes, and fresh fruit and veggies. The bigger ones are just like you see in the movies, people yelling prices at you, trying to get you to buy things, and raising prices at the slightest hint of english. Needless to say, whenever we stop to look at something, we dont speak, and then I ask the price in my best castellano "eh, cuanto cuestha?" :)

Vale vale vale. pronounced like Bale, is the greatest phrase since "No entiendo..." Basically when people are speaking to you really fast and thinking you catch everything they say, instead of saying "No entiendo" (I dont understand) you can just say "Vale" which means "I do understand" or "That totally makes sense!" This usually makes them happy and they dont look at you like you're stupid, or worse, try to explain it again really loudly/slowly, in your face with hand signals. Vale.

Until next time!