It's been a while...

Wow so I haven't written a blog in over a month. I don't really have a reason for not doing it. There was a period in October after my last blog entry that I stayed in Sevilla for 3 weekends straight. I had projects and tests at school, so nothing really exciting was happening. Another reason for not writing is just that the overall mood in the residencia has diminished significantly. People are getting homesick and more and more people fall victim to it everyday. Being homesick is normal, but letting it affect your time in Europe in a negative way is an absolute waste. Everyone loved being here in the beginning, and as you get more and more homesick you have to remember what you enjoyed about being here in the first place. Anyway all my roommates stay confined to their rooms for most of the day emerging only for school and meals. I sometimes wonder what this experience would have been like without wireless internet and laptops because it would force a lot more social interaction. One of the girls in our group wrote a note on Facebook about how she is loving Spain, but how it is not for everyone. She wrote that you have to be able to appreciate the culture and its differences or else they will drive you crazy. Everything moves slow in Spain and the laid back attitude is the exact opposite of the "hard working American" ideology. People do things on their own time, and in turn you get to do things on your own time as well.

As for me, my Spanish ability continues to fluctuate. Some days I can understand almost everything being said to me and have conversations with people. Other days, I feel like not even the most basic words make sense. I know overall I have improved tremendously, but I have reached the top of a hill only to find a mountain ahead of me. I also have found myself exhausted lately because of Spanish. I didn't realize how much always thinking and speaking a different language takes its toll on your mind. I sometimes come home from school mentally exhausted, unable to muster up energy to do anything. I'm still waiting for everything to just click. I have no idea when it will happen, but I feel like the time I have put into getting better should eventually pay off. One thing working to my disadvantage is the accent here. The best way to describe it is if you were learning English and had to go learn it in Ireland. I, being a fluent English speaker, can't even understand people in Ireland... and there are fluent speakers here who have a hard time understanding the Sevilla natives. I hope to someday live in South America to finish learning Spanish. The Spanish there is much easier to understand; the people pronounce every letter and don't shorten sentences.

I also have a couple trips coming up that I will be writing about and also a trip I have already been on. I'll try to get pictures and a report on Paris up in the next few days. For now I need to get back to reading my Spanish children's detective novel (assigned in one of my classes). I'm pretty sure nine year olds read this book here. It's alright though, I'm doing well overall and am hoping to enjoy my travels ahead.

Lagos...Spring Break '08!!!

This most recent week we had a holiday on Thursday and a holiday on Monday (today). For the long weekend I went with some of my friends to Lagos, Portugal. I didn't really know what to expect but had heard good things from other people I knew who had visited earlier. After surviving the miserable 6 1/2 hour bus ride there, we checked into our hostel which was called the Gold Coast. I was skeptical at first due to the fact that the hostel didn't even have a sign out front. Luckily, I was wrong, and the reason there was no sign yet was because the hostel was brand new. After quickly unpacking, we all threw on our bathing suits, grabbed our towels, and headed for the beaches.


Lagos is a very small town, and almost everyone there speaks English due to the fact that most of England and Australia comes here to vacation. It reminds me a lot of the Mexican beach towns which led us to all joke about being on spring break. It is a very touristy town, but I can't really complain because the food there was incredible.


Every morning we went to this small hole in the wall bar called The Odeon which served English style breakfast... hashbrowns, eggs, toast, bacon, pancakes; in fact all of this together was only 3 Euros and way better than anywhere I've had in the US.


The night life in Lagos consisted of a good meal for dinner and bar hopping for the rest of the night. The town is very small and you can easily walk from one end to the other in under 10 minutes. On Saturday night, I searched the whole town trying to find a bar with satellite playing the Texas/Oklahoma game. The problem was that at the same time the World Cup qualifying matches were being played, so all the bars around Lagos had these on. Luckily after an hour of searching I stumbled across an empty bar playing the Texas game. I went in and sat there by myself watching the game until half time when they suddenly switched the game to the Portugal/Sweden soccer game. I argued with the bar tender for a while about this... he kept telling me, "you're in Portugal right now, this is more important". First off, I was the only person in the bar and second everyone who worked at the bar was Australian, so I didn't understand why anyone would care as it was. I finally got to put the game back on, and I am so glad I got to see the rest. For those of you who didn't see the game, it was an instant classic with Texas pulling a come from behind victory. It is definitely a game I won't forget.

As for the rest of the time at Lagos, I went hiking through the cliffs by myself on one of the days that everyone was resting. I found some really cool secluded beaches and some great scenery.




Unfortunately, the sea was really rough so we couldn't rent kayaks to go exploring through the oceanic caves along the cliffs. I heard that it is a really cool excursion and hopefully I'll have another chance same day. We left Lagos on Sunday and had to suffer though a 7 1/2 hour bus ride back where we stopped in every town along the coast in Portugal picking up and dropping off passengers.

Traveling...and playing catchup

The last few weeks I have been very busy with traveling and school. I haven't had my computer with me, so my updates on the blog have been few and far between. Some very interesting things have been going on though, so I will try to write a few shorter posts than combine them all into a long one. When I last left off I was sitting in a Kabob sandwich restaurant having just returned from Huelva (i think). Huelva is a Spanish town that has a monastery dedicated to Christopher Colón (Colombus) and replicas of the ships he sailed on... the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.


This is the Niña, I didn't get a good picture of the Santa Maria which was the biggest.


I made a friend inside the ship.


Columbus himself...he was too busy plotting a course to India (or so he thought), so he refused to let me take a picture with him.

After the tour of the ships and the monastery of Columbus, we went as a group to one of the beaches in Huelva. The water was cold, and not much happened there to write about. Next... I write about my journey to Lagos.

Time's flying by

I'm sitting in a kabab sandwich shop right now which has free wifi. It was cool for the first 30 minutes, but then I looked around and realized there were a lot of Americans here. This week we only have a 3 day school week with Thursday off as a holiday and the following Monday off as well. On Thursday I am leaving via bus for Portugal. I'm going with some of my friends from the API group... were staying in Lagos for 2 nights then trying to get up to Lisbon. Time has been flying by here in Spain. I have been planning all the traveling I will be doing and am having trouble finding open weekends because there are so few left. I also have been having trouble with speaking fluent English because I have been focusing so much on Spanish. It's hard to think of an example, but when I speak I don't do it as fluidly as I did when I got here. I think this is a good thing though, as it shows that when I am speaking I am thinking about how to say things in Spanish as opposed to English. The easiest example I can think of is here in Spanish when you are hungry you say "yo tengo hambre" which translates literally "I have hunger" which I have caught myself saying multiple times.
Rosa has a daughter who has been studying in England for the last month. Her name is Sarah, and she just got back last week. I have been trying to practice as much Spanish as I can with her in exchange for me helping her with English. I think the trade off will be really beneficial and hope it will speed up my learning process. Sometimes when I don't know how to say what I want to it becomes really frustrating and I feel helpless. Also, when helping Sarah and seeing the English she is learning, I realize that I am learning Spanish at the 1st grade level. She will be writing things like: In the morning I don't like to get up because I am tired. I brush my teeth. I wash my hair when I get in the shower. I don't like going to school because I like doing a lot of other things. I am learning the exact same stuff in Spanish, so it is funny when you step back and realize what you are actually learning.
I have finally found some really cool spots in Sevilla. I like having places that I know are good and that I can always go to. Last night me and my roommates Jeff and Nate found a Chinese buffet called Sol Wok. It was absolutely incredible... you walk in and grab a plate then fill it with any type of vegetables you could possibly want, then you walk over to a huge buffet of uncooked meats which you throw on top of all the veggies. When your plate is loaded up you hand it to the chef who cooks it all together and tops it with a sauce of choice. Words really do this place no justice, it was amazing and by far the best food I have had since I've been here. Like I've said in earlier posts, the food in Spain is usually not good and very plain, so this was a pleasant surprise. Hasta Luego.

My birthday weekend...

Last Thursday I turned 22 years old. 22 is the first birthday where you start to feel kind of old. Up until 22, there are rewards for getting older such as: 16 being able to drive; 18 no longer being a minor, being able to vote; 21 being able to buy alcohol. Now that I'm 22 I don't have any more birthdays to look forward to like that. I guess when I turn 25 I'll enjoy the benefits of cheaper car insurance... Anyway we celebrated my birthday with my host family a week before because Rosa (the Mom) had a birthday on the 18th, so we celebrated together. They got a cake and brought out a bunch of wine and champagne at dinner.



On my real birthday we went out to a club called Newport... it was alright, but I've never been the club type. When I left I walked the wrong way down the river and ended up outside the Sevilla city limits at around 4:30am. An hour and a half later I finally found my way back home and got a solid 3 hours of sleep before having to wake up for school in the morning.

On Friday, API took us to Granada for the weekend. It's only about a 3 hour bus ride away, but on the way there we took a little detour up some mountains and got to hike around in this really cool area. I'm still not sure what the area is called, but it had some crazy rock formations. The clouds were really low, and it felt like I was in a Lord of the Rings movie.


Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures in Granada. The first night there we went to a Flamenco show. Flamenco is a type of Gypsy/Spanish music and dancing. I went to a show in Sevilla a few weeks earlier and didn't like it, but this was way different. We all sat in this old Gypsy cave that was dug out into a room. They had chairs lining the walls and everyone faced the middle. The show was way better than the one I saw before, and at the end they started pulling people out of the crowd to get up there and dance with them. A few people went up, then the dancer came and pulled me out of the crowd for the last person to go. I got into the dance a little more than everyone else had...the dancer's eyes got really wide as she was surprised about this. The crowd loved it too...one of the girls has a video that I'll try to put up as soon as she gives it to me.

The next day in Granada we saw the Alhombra which was a Spanish palace for the king and queen a few hundred years ago. I think they fled there for protection when under attack. To be honest I wasn't as impressed with this place as much as all the other palaces I have seen. There was a lot of Arabic influence and history here, but overall I just couldn't get interested in all of that. Written all over the buildings was this Arabic saying "There is no winner but Allah." which is right here in Arabic...
This was literally written thousands of times inside all of the buildings which was kinda creepy the more and more you saw it. There weren't too many interesting pictures from the Alhombra; most of the architecture was symmetrical and more plain than the other royal palaces.



Later on that night, we went out as a group to some random bar then a club. This seems to be the common theme here in Spain and is what most people my age do for fun at nights. There are tons of random bars all over Spain, so it's fun finding cool spots that nobody has heard about. The only thing I don't like is that everyone tries to come as an entire group and bar's hate it when 50 Americans all come in together. The club we went to was pretty cool though. It had a bunch of different levels and was carved out of a cave. The top level looked out over the Alhombra...once again I forgot my camera. Everyone had to wake up early Sunday morning to get on the bus. In my delirium I decided to lead the bus in karaoke with the microphone...followed by a long nap. More to come later, I am currently in the process of planning a trip to Portugal in two weeks.

Update

Not too much has been going on lately. I have been trying to do a post about all my roommates in the "residencia" but because most of them are girls, they never let me take a picture of them unless they are all dressed up. Thursday is my birthday, number 22, and I still have no idea what I'm going to do for it yet. On Friday we leave for Granada which will be a good change of pace from Sevilla. I'll hopefully take some pictures and have a blog entry with some substance. At school I'm taking 4 classes. Two of them are Spanish classes where the learning is heavily weighted towards speaking and interaction. Another is International Marking and the last is Global Economy. These are very interesting at the time being because of the financial crisis going on in the US and parts of Europe. As for life at my "residencia" a whole new group of girls moved into the apartment next door. The girls who I live with already are territorial about our group and are not very welcoming. It's funny to watch them be so nice to each other but so mean to them whenever they leave. I'm off to bed, I played a night fútbol game tonight under some lights. All the kids were from my school, so it was mostly english speakers. As the days pass I'm craving a Thundercloud sub more and more. I already have a list of restaurants and places to eat when I get back...that is if I'm not broke by then. Tomorrow I'm also booking my trip to London/Amsterdam. After hours of searching websites I think I have gotten the price down to something manageable. Adios from Sevilla.

Different than America

I've been here long enough that I have noticed quite a lot of differences between the US and Spanish culture. I'm just going to list them because it seems like the easiest way possible...

1) Siestas...why we don't have these at home I have no idea. They are great. They are refreshing. Everyone seems to be in a better mood in the mornings if they know a siesta is only a few hours away.

2)Food... obviously, but what surprises me the most is how much smaller the portions are here. I probably eat half the amount of food that I eat in the US, and I'm not ever hungry for more. We over eat a lot in America and it really shows as we are a fat country in general. There are more McDonald's restaurants in Manhattan than there are in the entire country of Spain. The quality of food is worse here, which is the only downside. Food is made to be preserved longer, so the freshness is lost. I really hope I can keep up this diet when I get back. It's hard in America when you pay a certain amount for a meal and get a huge portion, then feel like you are "wasting" money by not finishing the entire thing. I've decided I'd rather waste the money because the long term health effects of overeating are way worse than losing a few bucks.

3)Beautiful women... I think this has a lot to do with the great diets that Spaniards have. I have yet to see an unattractive woman here. Most of them are beautiful and in great shape. They seem to take pride in how they look, but not in a superficial way like us Americans do. Girls don't dress slutty here, and they don't have to because everyone isn't in a competition to sell themselves out.

4)Driving... to drive anywhere here is a last option for most Spaniards. The price of gas is 1.25 Euros/liter which equals to about $9.50 a gallon. Everyone walks and rides busses... it's a little slower, but nobody is in a hurry here for anything.

5)Hurrying... expanding upon my last point, everything moves slower here. Nobody is in a huge hurry to do anything. The laid back atmosphere is very relaxing and peaceful. Nobody is on edge or in a bad mood. You never see anyone using their car horns or being rude to each other. I think that "being in a hurry" accounts for a lot of anger and frustration in America. We should learn to slow down.

6)Sports... Spaniards love their fútbol, and that's about it. It is very dry in Spain and expensive to water fields, so they mostly play on concrete courts with smaller goals. Spain does not have the sports facilities that I have grown up accustomed to. Nobody plays basketball and people rarely play tennis. Basketball courts cost money to rent out as well as tennis courts...and you have to pay for the use of lights if it's dark.

7)Breakfast... This one took a little getting used to for me. People here don't eat a big breakfast. Breakfast consists of a glass of orange juice (zumo de naranja) and a piece of toast with some jelly. I miss eggs, bacon, ham, breakfast tacos, etc. Also, the milk is kept warm in "tetrapacks" which is boxed. It tastes funny and it's hard to drink warm. I can't tell you what I would give for a tall glass of cold milk right now...

8)Sex... People here are very open. Since nobody is overweight and takes good care of themselves, there is no such thing as shame. If you are fat, then you get called fat...and it's not embarrassing because it's a fact. Guys are very upfront with girls usually asking right off the bat if they want to date or go out. There's no "ice breaking" and no middle ground. If you talk to a girl, she thinks you want to be with her.

9)Groups... People here don't hang out in large groups. You mostly see couples, or 2 to 3 people walking around. When our group goes out to bars and stuff at night, I think the fact that we travel with 5 or more people gives away the fact that we are American. People here are very selective about who they spend their time with which is why guys are so upfront with girls. 

There are many more things, but I'm tired and need to get some rest. Take from this what you want. We can learn a lot from Spanish culture.

Frustrated

We just finished our first week of classes at Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO). I felt like up until today my spanish was vastly improving everyday. I was understanding more and being able to speak more clearly and quickly. Today was a completely different story... I felt slow, I couldn't understand anything my teachers were saying, and I couldn't even pronounce words that I normally have no trouble with. At least it's the weekend, so I'll have a break from some spanish and be able to relax a little bit. Culture shock becomes a very real thing whenever I am separated from our API english speaking group. Today I felt like every word I heard in Spanish I had to translate into English in my head and then try to understand it. It was such a slow process that I felt like an idiot trying to talk to anyone. 

Tonight we are all going to our first Discotecha (dance club) which should be fun. I'm not really the dancing type, but as they say...when in Spain. I also found out we have a 9 day stretch where there are no classes, so I am booking a plane ticket to central Europe and trying to see as many countries as possible. Top of the list is Amsterdam, Prague, Florence, Niece, and Munich. Tomorrow I'm playing in a soccer game against some very good guys in their 20s. I don't know what to expect, but it should be fun competing with some good players. Sunday we have planned a trip to go to Cadiz which is a beach about an hour south of here. Should be a fun weekend...I'll give and update after the weekend.

Sevilla, Fútbol, and Rosa

The group FINALLY arrived in Sevilla after a 6 hour bus ride that felt like years. We stopped half way at a random gas station for a break. I, of course, found a slot machine that took Euros. After putting a few coins in I hit the jackpot and ended up winning 2 Euros. So far I am up in gambling for the trip...

Sevilla is awesome. I feel like it is a lot like Austin... there is a hike and bike trail that goes all around the city. There is a river that runs through the middle of the city. It gets really hot during the summer and has a few months of perfect weather. I'm sure it's nothing like Austin, but that I just like Austin so much that I find qualities of Austin in every city I go to. Also, for once in my life I lucked out big time in living arrangements. I live in a 4 bedroom apartment with 1 guy and 6 girls. Below us lives Rosa, who owns the apartment. She cooks all our meals, cleans the apartment, does all our laundry and is the nicest, coolest woman I have ever met. She loves to laugh and speaks only spanish. Her food is incredible, unlike the rest of Spanish food. I have yet to dislike one of her meals, which consist of some type of rice, bread, water (they hardly drink beverages here besides water), and a meat stew dish.

We got settled in and were told by our group leaders that we didn't have any planned tours or trips for the weekend. We were supposed to get to know the city and enjoy ourselves for a few days. I'll write more about my roommates later as I get to know them better. Most the people on this trip are from the north east US (boston, connecticut, NY, etc). It's so funny to me how different these people are from us in the south. They are very rude, loud, and upfront but not in a bad way. They also swear like sailors. I think I like the south better, and I let them know it everyday. Apparently I have a Texan accent. 

A bunch of the people in my group planned to go to Cadiz for the weekend which is a beach town an hour south of Sevilla. Long story short, there was a miscommunication about meeting and I missed the bus there. I decided it would be a good day to go explore on my own and get away from the comfort of the group. I got into some workout clothes and started asking locals where I could find a fútbol game. They all told me to go to this certain park, so I went to it and found some younger kids playing 3 on 3. The court was smooth cement like outdoor basketball courts and the goals were about 1/3 of the size of normal goals. I walked up and asked them if I could play...they quickly found out I was american after I couldn't understand a single word they were saying. The common thought is that when you learn a language everyone speaks that language grammatically perfect. This is not the case, so not only am I trying to understand a language I don't know very well, but trying to understand high school slang. I was by far the biggest person out there. Most the kids were anywhere from 12 to 17. They had me choose teams and we started playing 4 on 4. After you choose teams here everyone sprints to their respective goal. Whoever touches it last has to play goalie. Of course, right after I made the last pick everyone started sprinting, and I stood completely still not knowing what they were doing. So here I am in the middle of Sevilla by myself stuck playing goalie...great. I was so big for the goal that it was really hard for them to score on me. My teammate told me that I could switch out of playing goalie as soon as a goal was scored on me so after a little while I just let one go by. The kids were all pretty good, but I could hold my own. I even had a goal of my own and a sweet assist which one of the kids headed in. When the ball goes out here they say "ha salido" which literally means "has exited". Overall it was a great experience and I got really tired chasing these kids around. I got invited back to play the next week, but since I have found another game at fields with some guys in their twenties. This is going to be the true test.

Yesterday was our first day of school. I'm still working out my schedule, so I'll write more about the school later. One cool thing is that they have intramural sports, and the school team. There's a chance I can play for the school team which plays against other colleges in Spain. I think that I might have to be here for longer than a semester though, but it would be cool to be a Spanish college basketball player.

Holy Toledo

On the way to Sevilla our tour bus stopped in a town called Toledo. It was the place where the Moors ruled Spain until they were driven out by the Catholics. The cathedral here is one of the biggest in the world, and the best decorated and richest. Unfortunately they wouldn't let us take pictures inside of it...

This is me, Zach, and Randy (the girl...weird name I know she said she was named after her grandfather). Zach is one of the funniest people I have met. He is crazy, loud, and says whatever comes to his mind. He is deeply religious, or so he claims. Also, he can chug a beer in just under 4 seconds, he pretty much pours it down his throat. His best quote at Toledo was when we were walking up to the cathedral, "Hey guys, you know they just finished building this last week." (500+ year old building).

Catching up

Although we were only in Madrid for 3 days, it felt like forever. I really wanted to get to Sevilla and get settled into my apartment and get used to my routine so I could travel and enjoy myself. Also, all we did in Madrid was go to tours of random religious buildings and the royal palace. Don't get me wrong...they were all really cool, but I have never been the tour type as I get bored really easy and quickly become that guy in the back cracking jokes and reverting back to my 8 year old humor. Rather than explain the monuments I saw I'll put up a few pictures.

This is the royal palace of Madrid. It has over 2000 rooms and every room is full of gold, marble, and every type of rich material you can imagine. Very very cool building....very boring tour.

This is the royal burial chamber for all the Spanish kings that have ever ruled. It is about an hour outside of Madrid. The actual burial chamber was awesome... it was a spiral winding hallway staircase down to a marble room where all the kings and their queens are buried in marble coffins. Again very cool, but boring tour.

I made the mistake of eating Burger King on the second day and wasn't able to enjoy anything else in Madrid for the rest of the time there. I have already vowed in Austin to never go to the BK lounge, and after this I'm pretty sure it's just a world wide shitty establishment. Thank you burger king. We finally packed up and headed for Sevilla...

Arriving in Madrid

I finally had some time and a solid internet connection to sit down and create this blog. It is currently 8:00 am in Seville (pronounced Sevilla), Spain. I arrived in Spain on September 1st, landing in Madrid. I had been told that Madrid was a lot like New York City...very populated and crowded. As we pulled into the city, I was very surprised at what I saw. The buildings were small and the city seemed very clean. Our bus pulled up to our hotel and let us off at Hotel Moderno.

This is the view from my hotel room. 

There are building height restrictions in Spain, which makes Madrid have a very cool feeling to it. There are no sky scrapers...they build out instead of up. In the distance you can see a church. Religious buildings in Spain are the only ones that do not have height restrictions. 

After settling into the hotel we all met as a group (API) and had dinner. There were about 50 kids in the group, and at this time I knew none of them so I tried to get to know as many as possible. The majority of the kids in the group were from somewhere from northeastern US...mostly Massachusets/Connecticut/New York. Apparently I have a texan accent, but I think that their Boston accents were way stronger. After dinner, the group went to an outside bar type area to have some drinks and get to know each other. Most people slowly trickled back to the hotel due to exhaustion from jet-lag. Those that weren't too tired went to a bar called Dubliners. The bar was an Irish bar, where we were drinking Mexican and Dutch beer (Corona and Heineken), and talking to a group of Australian, Austrian, and Scottish people...all while in Spain. Pretty weird combination if you ask me, but it was fun. When I got tired I made my way back to the Hotel Moderno for a good night's sleep in my tiny hotel room. More to come later...