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.