Venice

Okay so I spent something like 3 days in Venice by myself. I got to wander around and find all the cool nooks and crannies there. I stayed at two different hostels. The first was kinda boring but there were some interesting characters there and it was right on the Grand Canal. The second was more fun. It had a terrace and a really cool dude that worked there named Alex. He let me run the place for a little while which was nice. I got to use the computer and tell people what to do. I enjoyed it. St. Marc’s Square was kind of a let down. Not a ton of pigeons but that was where our concert was. We saw a nice quintet of Vivaldi’s four seasons. I liked Venice a lot but as for cities with canals go, I prefer Amsterdam.

I was much happier after Kristen and Natalie showed up. But there isn’t much else to do in Venice other than opera and St. Marc’s Square and churches. I still had a pretty good time.

 

Noted*

Sorry all. When I got back from Spring break I had papers and finals and all sorts of nonsense. Now I’m on my European tour and so I will try to write things as I go along.

 

Prague, Praga, Praha

Over spring break I was fortunate enough to travel to Prague, Venice, Rome and Athens. My friend Matt is studying in Prague and Leyna in Paris. Leyna came over with her friend Danielle and the four of us set out to discover what the Czech people call Praha. Prague was beautiful, I really liked the Gothic architecture and the way that it was completely different from Alicante. It kind of reminded me of home. Very nice landscapes and rivers. We basically just walked around and enjoyed what we could see from the outdoors. We walked down from Matt’s place to the John Lennon wall and across the Charles bridge to Old Town Square. There is a really cool Zodiac clock there along with several kiosks with food and souvenirs. Prague is kind of medieval, they had mead, swords, and all sorts of other goodies. The only problem I had with Prague was that I didn’t really feel too safe the whole time. It was so much like all sorts of scary movies. Probably the most fun part was when we went to a this bar where the keg was at our table and we could serve ourselves. There was a screen with the number of beers that each table had drank and of tables in other bars in Prague. We came in first in the country at one time. It was quite fun.

John Lennon wall

View From The Charles Bridge

Zodiac Clock

Old Town Square

We’re Praha 1-4. We also got up to 20 beers.

Leyna, pouring herself a nice cold one.

 

Las Fallas

From the 15th through the 19th of March there is a festival in Valencia called Las Fallas. Las Fallas means “the failures”. The people in Valencia spend an entire year constructing these monuments out of wood and papier-mâché. They are built with the help of architects and are planned out for an entire year. They are sort of like three dimensional caricatures.The festival was created to celebrate San Jose, the patron saint of carpentry and the virgin de los desamparados. There is a floral offering to her on the 17th and 18th and the people make her dress out of flowers. Oh and did I mention that they are called failures because one wins and all of the others are burnt on the 19th? Well that’s how is goes.

So obviously this weekend we had to go and check this thing out. All over the city there were Fallas, each neighborhood makes one. We went on the 18th during the day to see all of the festivities. There is one part called La Mascletá that happens everyday at 2 pm, they have thousands of firecrackers and they go off in a rhythm, it is a competition and whoever makes the best one wins… something. I don’t know what they win, but the freakin’ win. The women also dress up in special outfits in hopes of becoming the Fallera Mayor y Mayor Infantil. The Fallera Mayor tells them to begin La Mascletá.  We returned on the 19th La Cremá to see all of them be burnt to the ground. The most interesting and amazing thing is that about 2 million other people came to do the same thing. They also sell firecrackers all over so people just blow them up all over the place, in your face, in a dumpster, in the street. They scare you and hurt people and of course I had to buy some. Just for the fun of it. They sold bandannas everywhere and I didn’t quite understand it until I was standing directly in front of a three story high falla that was on fire and needed something to cover my face from the heat and smoke. It was all coming together but we were also on our way back to the bus at that point so unfortunately… I learned my lesson a bit too late. PS. they don’t set any of them on fire until midnight so we took buses home at 3:30 am. It was a lot of fun and something I had been looking forward to since senior year in high school, I’m happy to say it was worth it.

I also forgot to mention that when they light the fallas on fire it involves a rope of firecrackers that is lit by the Fallera of the neighborhood. So it is a quite explosive start to the evening, my ears were just about on fire the whole time.

Jessica, Natalie and I in front of the floral gown of the Virgen

Falleras Infantiles

OBAMA!

The Winner and for sure the best.

Before

After

Before

After

Me, Kristen-This was actually one of the coolest things we found here.

 

Barça y El Zoo

Last weekend we traveled to Barcelona. On our way we stopped at the Codorníu Bodega where we received a tour of the cava’s and were able to try two different types of Cava.

Codorníu Bodega

I enjoyed taking a vacation from my vacation, but I wasn’t really impressed with it. It was really nice but very crowded and full of rude, angry people. The Gaudi architecture was the only thing I really enjoyed about it. I prefer a smaller city like the one I live in. We saw La Sagrada Familia, Parque Güell, and the Batlló House.

La Sagrada Familia

Parque Güell

Batlló House

Other than these few places, and this type of architecture, I found Barcelona to be highly overrated. We went out to a giant bar where we got some free sangria and this other bar that was called Chupitos (shots). They had like 400 different types of shots. It was somewhat incredible.

The next weekend we went to the zoo. It was an hour train ride and a four mile walk but it was totally worth it. The zoo was separated into continents, which was cool, along with a special exhibit for venomous creatures. The venomous area had spiders, snakes, frogs, bugs and stuff like that.

Poison Dart Frogs

America was pretty cool filled with all sorts of exotic animals like monkeys and mammals from the rain forest. There was also a bird sanctuary that you could just walk into and you were surrounded by exotic birds. You could buy seed and feed them and it was so amazing. Not to mention there was no security or supervision in this place so you were free to do as you pleased.

My hand feeding this bird thingy…

Toucan that was 20 feet away from me. So cool.

There was a similar area full of llamas, goats, mini South American style kangaroos and oddly enough guinea pigs.

Unsupervised Llamas

Then there was Asia which was filled with the usual; Asian elephants, lions, tigers, rhinos and like otters. There was no Africa so I think that they kind of combined Asia with Africa. The otters heard us coming and thought we were going to feed them so they came running toward us and squealing. It was like the cutest thing I have ever seen and then we saw them getting fed. We also saw a rhino feeding. Poor Europe was a tiny little area that only had deer and goats and turkeys. It was absurd.

Me and Deer in “Europe”

As an animal lover, I had so much fun playing with the the llama and deer.

It has been so long since I have written that so much has happened since these things. But I had midterms and needed to try to do some studying. I just spent the last two days in Valencia at this festival called Las Fallas and I will write about that once I have pictures from it.

Until then.

Anda

 

Oh AmsterDam

This past weekend a large group of us took a trip to Amsterdam. The group was comprised of Rachel, Kristen, Victoria, Brittni, Sarah, Karim (our British recruit) Susie, Stacey (a dude), Abby, and myself.

As I stared at my phone on Thursday, waiting for the clock to change to 17:30 whilst sitting in my Cine class, I looked down the row and motioned to Victoria to get ready. Once the time changed we bolted and called a cab to take us to the airport.

Victoria and I arriving at the airport.

We anxiously waited for our flight to board and when we got on we were all relieved to realize that every single person in and around Holland speaks English.

Kristen and I on the moving sidewalk in Amsterdam Airport at Schipol

When we arrived we still had to take a train into the center of the city, this is where the group split up into the folks who wanted to hit a cafe immediately and those who wanted to find the hostel. My group fled into the cold, 20 degree, night to find a cafe with no map or plan to get to the hostel. Of course after the cafe we had barely any ability to find our way through this foreign city and quickly flagged a cab to save us from frostbite.

We got an eight person room in a hostel and Sarah and Brittni shared a room with some random men.  Victoria quickly named the cat in the hostel “Ni Ni Naz” for some odd reason, but we all seemed to find it quite amusing.

Ni Ni Naz

On Friday we woke early and got ready, I chose to shower in our toilet/shower room, literally a small rectangular room with a shower curtain separating what was supposed to be the shower from the toilet. We headed out, Victoria, Rachel, Stacey, Abby, Kristen and I and stopped at a cafe once we got into town.

Left to Right: Stacey, Me, Kristen

Afterward Victoria, Kristen and I split off and ran into Sarah and Brittni and went to sex museum. We got what we paid for (4 euros), it was pretty lame, just lots of phallic statues and porno clips. Kristen and I left the group and took a little canal boat tour. I quite enjoyed that, it was interesting to see the city from the lower angle and to have a tour guide show us some interesting sites.

We decided to try to walk back to our hostel, which was pretty far outside the center of the city, and on the way we were derailed by a phone call telling us that everyone was going to tour the Heineken Brewery. Obviously we couldn’t miss such a thing so we high-tailed it over there.

Thankfully the hostel had maps to I was set to find anything we needed to find in that city.

The Brewery was cool, we got to drink beer and learn how it was made and things like that. My favorite part was a virtual reality ride that led us to a room to drink beer in and then a whole room devoted to dancing. It was quite fun.

Left to Right: Me, Susie, Kristen

The rest of the night consisted of eating dinner and going to bed early for myself and Kristen, while the others paid 35 euro to see a sex show. When I woke up the next morning all I heard was Stacey saying, “Anda, I ate a banana off a lady last night. Well I wouldn’t exactly call her a lady.” I was kind of hilarious.

Saturday was the day to explore the museums and such things. We went to the Van Gogh museum, which was lovely, but we couldn’t take any pictures there. Afterward we all just wanted to eat. One thing that is lost on Spaniards is the concept of breakfast; all they eat is chocolate milk, coffee, juice, doughnuts and croissants. We found a nice pancake place and ate our hearts out. Then we attempted to go to the Anne Frank house but forgot that it was 2 PM on a Saturday and the line was ridiculous. Kristen and I took off to find The Doors cafe that we saw on our boat tour the day before, I enjoyed myself there as did she. Then we wandered around until some other people called us to meet up with them in the Red Light District which is exactly as it could be. You cannot take pictures there either but I can vividly explain it to you. There are basically french doors everywhere (you know, doors that are all window) and framing these doors are long fluorescent red lights. In each door frame there is a woman in underwear. Some of them are attractive and some are not so much. The process by which you sleep with these women is as follows: walk up to the door, show interest, and wait for her to open the door and close the curtain. It’s that simple. Surrounding all of these prostitutes are sex shops and live porn shows and other types of sex shows. It’s very strange and foreign, but interesting all at the same time. 

Kristen and I near the Red Light District

The rest of the night was pretty simple, we went back to the hostel and got Rachel and went to the Amsterdam sign to take pictures.

Random guy, Kristen, Me

Rachel, Me

Then we hit up a nice Argentinian restaurant for dinner and went to another cafe after.

We basically stayed up all night because our flight left at 6:55 AM and we needed to leave the hostel at 4:00 AM.

The trip was so amazing. I had so much fun there and I can’t wait until my spring break trip. For spring break I’m going to Prague, Venice, Rome and Athens. And after the semester is over I’ll be traveling around Spain with my parents and then to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam (again), Berlin, Dublin, and finally London. It should all be amazing.

Anda

 

Baile, Vale, Primera, Sí Sí Sí, No Pasa Nada

I forgot to mention that when we were in Granada, attending the Flamenco performance, I was selected (along with a few others) to dance with the Flamenco dancers at the end of their performance. Although at first I didn’t want to, my classmates know me well enough to know that if they start to clap and yell for me to do something, I most certainly will.

That is me with the Flamenco dancer who looks like the witch from Hocus Pocus (not Bette Midler or Sarah Jessica Parker, the other one).

These are two of the dancers… as you can see they are very very close to us. There was not a lot of space in that tiny room.

We have the option of taking dance classes through a dance school in Alicante. I opted to take both the Latin dance class and the Flamenco dance class. On Monday we began the Latin class and we started to learn how to Salsa and how to Merengue. I am acting as the boy as my partner finds it helpful to have someone lead her and there are 17 people in the class 16 of which are female. Next week we will be learning Bachata and Tango. I am really excited about learning both of those, however all of these dances are quite difficult. Whenever we start the teacher, Pilar, always yells “Vale!” They say that for just about everything here, it basically means “Okay”, it can be a question or a statement but they use it all the time. She also yells “Primera!” when she wants us to start at the beginning after teaching us like 6 different steps. Not easy. Very fun. Very embarrassing. Pilar laughs at us; we are quite comical.

I have gotten used to hearing certain things being said around the dorm and now whenever I agree with anything I always say, “Sí sí sí.” instead of just one I feel the need to use three. It really signifies that i strongly agree and it’s kind of unnecessary, but I enjoy doing it.

They also continuously use the phrase, “No pasa nada.” Which essentially means, “Don’t worry about it.” I find it very useful and comforting to hear when I’m on a crowded bus and I fall on someone. It makes me feel like part of their little club.

I’m definitely enjoying myself here and will have more to tell you after this weekend as we are traveling to Amsterdam. It shall be fun.

Below is a picture of the group that I am a part of in a courtyard in Granada. My group is called Language and Culture:

These are my friends and I at La Alhambra:

That’s all for now.

Anda

 

Flamenco Dancers and Four Pizzas

I can’t even believe how much time has passed since my last post. I have been very busy, it’s been like 16 days or something. This past week was the start of regular classes. Literature is very difficult as I can’t really understand my teacher. She has a very thick accent and speaks very quickly. Thankfully I can understand my Spanish cinema teacher very well. It’s actually very easy to understand him and that gives me hope.

This past weekend we went to Granada. The bus ride was somewhere around five hours long. It was kind of amazing, as we left the western coast we drove inland and we were surrounded by canyons, plateaus, rivers. Finally as we really entered Andalucia we saw the Sierra Nevadas, gorgeous snow capped peaks. There were houses built into the mountain, little pueblos and cacti everywhere. It was amazing. I am really upset that I didn’t bring my video camera along for the ride, however I plan to bring it with me on my trip to Barcelona.

When we got to Granada we had some tours to go on. We went through a church and cathedral that had the bodies of the Catholic Kings (Fernando II and Isabel I) along with other items from that time.

That evening we went up into the mountains and were shuffled into a long narrow room with white walls and copper pots hanging all around. There were chairs along the wall and we all took seats. As we sat the lights changed and in walked a guitarist, a singer and four dancers. They began dancing inches in front of us, so close that we were hit by their dresses. It was amazing. We watched them tell a story with their dancing, most of the music was man made; castanets, guitar, clapping and singing. I was one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.

The next day we visited La Alhambra. It is a castle and a fortress. The place is on a mountain on an enormous plot of land. There are gardens in it amazing small forests and groves. There is a labyrinth and a palace. It is like it’s own little city within Granada. Our tour guide, Maria, was really sweet and I think she really enjoyed speaking with us in Spanish, I have a feeling not many Americans even bother talking to her. She complimented us on our vocabulary and accents. The tour was very nice, I really liked how all of the places were so beautiful and they all served the perfect purposes. Some of them were there for safety but a lot of my favorite places were just there to be a beautiful place to be. There are courtyards everywhere and they just wanted to be open and outside. It was quite breathtaking.

The tour was quite long and we walked quite a bit and by the time we were done all we wanted to do was eat. Once we got back within the city lines of Granada they dropped us off to get lunch. Myself and five other people (Susie, Amanda, Rachel. Kristen and Natasha) went to get pizza. Susie didn’t want anything to eat so we ordered four pizzas and some gnocchi and went to town. Afterward most of the entire group got ice cream, I think this was one of the first times we have eaten this much since we’ve been here because for some reason we just seem to eat less food.

Now I’m back in my dorm room and doing my homework. I’m going to go to Tiffany’s room (the one other girl in this building from the US) and speak Spanish with her since she signed a contract saying she must speak in Spanish. We’ll go to lunch together and possibly meet up with some of the guys while we’re there.

I hope everyone at home is doing very well and I want you all to know I miss you. Hasta Luego! or as most say her “ta luego”, it just comes out that way.

Anda

 

Que Le Den Por Culo

For those of you who don’t speak Spanish (or haven’t learned the small and very helpful phrases of this country) Que le den por culo literally means f*** it in the ass. I am in a two week course and tomorrow I have an exam, it is essentially a midterm and I have been studying for the last four hours or so. As my good friend Allyse Falce put it “You have never studied that much in your life.” Lo siento padres (I’m sorry parents) but on the whole that is a correct statement. Not that I don’t ever study, but it is rare that I can sit down and do it non-stop for such a period of time. For tomorrow’s exam it is essential though. It will be covering four different types of past tense, the differences between ser/estar (both of which mean “to be” so learning when to use them is a pain in the ass), some comparative phrases, vocabulary and common phrases. I think I just died.

Thankfully everyone has a test of similar caliber, except those people in the very remedial courses.

Also for you family members and friends on facebook who are wondering why I haven’t yet posted any pictures, it is because I have officially broken my camera. Like an idiot I put it in my carry-on, thinking it would be more safe, and it seems that I must have dropped it at some point because there is no visual on it. When I take pictures, they are very nice black rectangles. Thankfully my friends all have cameras and have taken some great pictures already. So enjoy those of which I am tagged.

For now, it’s back to the books and then off to bed.

Anda

 

Café Y La Ciudad

After sitting in class for four hours trying to differentiate between two verbs with the same meaning my head is about to explode. And I still have homework. My teacher is just about the sweetest woman ever, which is wonderful but she speaks in rapid Spanish for the entirety of class. Fortunately out of all of the teachers we have met, she is the most easily understood.

Class begins at 9 AM and lasts until 2PM with a one hour break in between. Not a horrible deal but two hours of class in a foreign language is hard to handle at the moment. These are the language intensive courses and they will only continue until January 29th, after that we begin regular classes. During the break I had my advising session; we discussed the classes I would be taking. Along with two Spanish classes, both which I can’t remember what I signed up for, I will be taking Spanish Cinema and Spanish and Latin American Literature. I think my class schedule is something to the effect of Spanish for four hours M-Th and LITT from 11-1 directly after Spanish on M and W and Spanish Cinema from 4-6 on T and Th. Not exactly what I had in mind, but at least I have Fridays off.

Alicante, in general, isn’t the most beautiful of cities. The land around the city is wonderful though. There are many beaches and mountains and a castle that encloses part of the city. The city center itself is pretty old and worn out, but fairly clean. There are palm trees and banyan everywhere and it pretty much reminds me of Florida. The one thing that is the most difficult for me to get used to is the number of feral cats around here. Everywhere you look you see un gato. Just last night I fell asleep to the loud not-so-melodic sounds of a cat howling. If you know anything about me, which most of you reading this do, you know how difficult it is for me to walk away from any animal that might need my help/a home. At any rate I want to take them all into my dorm room and feed them.

The dorms are located outside the city in a sub-city called San Vicente del Raspeig, this is also where the University is. El Uni. Apart from myself there are five boys from Bucknell who are living in the dorms. They take care of me, invite me to dinner with them and call me when they are going to the city, things like that. I have a roommate named Sylvia. She’s from Valencia. She calls me whenever she is going to eat a meal with her friends. There are about 40,582,032 of them… just kidding. But she seems to know everyone and when we go to the dining hall there are at least 12 of us at once. The funny thing about that is that they all speak in Spanish, all at the same time, and I have no idea what is going on. I catch little things, like when they swear or something because those words are always the loudest and most clear. It’s nice that she always invites me places with her but if you could see me when I’m with them you wouldn’t recognize me. I’m quiet and introverted and don’t talk much. The most I do is laugh when they do something funny. They enjoy messing with each other, playing jokes and teasing. They are actually kind of hilarious.

I feel pretty fortunate to be able to take a bus for 20 minutes, meet up with a friend and walk to the beach to watch the sunset. I have already gotten a pretty good feel for the city, where things are and how to get to them. Tomorrow we have a group trip to the Mercado Central (Central Market) which apparently has everything you could ever dream of, we’ll see about that.

I just spoke with my friend Rachel and I think we will be going to dinner tonight in the city. I had no plans of doing such things but she is in the other section of students and I only get to see her for like a half an hour everyday so I’ll make the trip out. They separate us like we have freakin’ Leprosy. They really don’t want interaction between us and the other section. It really weird. Rachel also goes to Northeastern, she’s very nice and finds most things I say funny, or at least she laughs quite hard at them. She’ll be graduating in the summer though and possibly moving to D.C. which kind of bums me out but she’s a good friend here so I’ll go with it. I also hang out with Kristen, another Northeastern student. She’s a nut and I was convinced was like whole lot more intelligent than me (which is possibly true, she speaks better Spanish, but otherwise I don’t have her transcript or anything) regardless, she warned me that she was a total ditz and I didn’t believe her. Until now. As she gets more and more comfortable with me I see more and more what she is talking about. And I find it quite amusing. Then there is Amanda, I don’t know as much about her as I soon will but she goes to school in Minnesota… and we have a lot in common, likes and dislikes. She just turned 23 and that was what we were celebrating on Saturday. And Natasha goes to school in North Carolina. Shes kinda insane… totally a nervous nelly and is pretty funny with her half black, half southern accent. She knows a lot of Spanish but doesn’t like to speak it as much. The other day we went to a cafe and the waiter was hilarious, he joked around with us about her Spanish vs. ours because she wasn’t speaking as much. We decided that we like him and went back yesterday. I think we’ll make it a regular trip.

We all pretty much hang out together. There are something like 50 people here from CIEE and we all get along pretty well. I like the group a lot, everyone likes to go out and dance and it’s going to be a good time here.

My homework isn’t going to get done if I continue blogging though. Hasta Luego.

Anda