This is all pretty outdated because the internet at school was down for a long time (SO annoying), so I couldn´t upload this…it is all about last week. I will have a blog entry up about Barcelona soon!
Ahhh por fin, puedo respirar...finally I can breathe! I just finished my last midterm so I am in a fantastic mood. I mostly forget that I'm actually going to school here until it hits me the week of exams and I get wonderful flashbacks of College Library or the creepy cages in Memorial. Only it's a little bit different because I'm getting tan next to a river in Spain...so I can't complain toooo much :) Though recently (for the past week and a half), Pepita has been getting her kitchen redone and a new bathroom put in, so things have been a little hectic. By hectic I mean that the water in the bathroom with the shower (the pre-existing bathroom), has the water shut off right now so I just showered in the new shower, though the new shower has no doors on it so I pretty much held my head over it and did what I could...I'll be surprised if anything looks clean besides the entire bathroom (which is dripping wet). Oh well, I mean, it's not like I'm going to see my Spanish hottie tomorrow or anything...oh wait...lol. C'est la vie haha.
Besides being done with midterms, as most of you know, I did just celebrate my one and only 21st birthday last week...whoooo!!! I couldn't have asked for a better birthday either. Except to have you all there of course. Even the day of the week was perfect. For years I have been looking at the day that my 21st birthday would be on (Thursday), and I was always pretty satisfied, but since we don't have school on Fridays here, it is probably the best day of the week to have a birthday.
We went out on Wednesday for a little while to a bar that is nearby in Triana, but I wanted to “save myself” for more of a blow out on Thursday, so we didn't go too crazy, though it was still a lot of fun. Thursday morning I woke up and was eating breakfast, (my white chocolate and chocolate nutella on toast with yogurt and fruit...breakfast of champions!), and like I said, we've had construction workers here for a while-- and Pepita came in with a present and started singing Feliz Cumpleanos to me with all the construction guys haha. She gave me a really cute pink shirt and a ring :) Oh Pepita. I had one class on Thursday, with my awesome feminist literature teacher, and we went on a little field trip to the church down the street and she told us about it and then we got organic muffins from the nuns! Awesome. After that I got to talk to my parents and Omi for a long time...it was really good to hear their voices! It felt just like being at Madison or something. Except 80 degrees and cloudless in the middle of March.
For dinner, me and ten friends went to a really good (and cheap) Italian restaurant on Calle Betis. The food was SOOOO good. I had some sort of tortelli pasta with spinach....made me miss spinich ravioli from home, it was delicious. Afterwards we hit up some bars on Betis before finishing the night at a discoteca and dancing are booties off. I know I'm not going into huge detail, but I'm sure you can all fill in the blanks—there was plenty of 21 year old fun that was had. And as my grandma told me, I'm going to have a lot of birthdays, some I'll remember, some I won't, but I will never forget the birthday I spent in Spain...ahh.
I don't want to make any of you too depressed but the weather here is absolutely beautiful. I here you guys got a few warm days though so...whoo! It has been like 80-85 degrees and cloudless pretty much every day lately. I am like as tan as I am in the middle of summer normally. (And Garrett, after this semester, you'll never catch up to me, so you better start fake baking.) The sun makes everyday so enjoyable...though I'd always like to be enjoying it more by the river and not in a classroom...
This last week I got a volunteer job at an after school program with Spanish kids in a poor neighborhood of Sevilla. Its fun but the kids are INSANE. There is no order whatsoever, and if I knew how to yell at them sufficiently I would, but first of all, I have no authority to them, and second of all, they all speak better Spanish than I do so it isn't easy to fight with them. The other leaders are just really inconsistent with their discipline, which is half the problem. They will yell at one kid and then not at another, and then see some fighting and let it go, and yell at others fighting...the kids definetely run the show. I guess we're having a meeting about how to improve so maybe I can kick them into shape. The kids are funny though...they all think it is hilarious how I speak Spanish. “Why do you talk with so many 'S's? You use too many 'r's....you can't speak Spanish...do you even know how to read? Here, come look at a dictionary, it maybe it will help..” Spending two hours with them really cuts me down to size, that's for sure. They love me tho so I know it will be fun. It is also going to be good to say that I'm doing this because I have an interview with the Madison Park and Rec department doing some little kid activities, (and speaking Spanish to them). Which means, yes I will be spending the summer in Madison, and I am sooooo excited. Summer in Madison is like heaven, I love that city. The only problem is that my Carli is going to be making something of herself in far off California....sad. Of course I am beyond excited for her that she's making such an effort in the direction of her future blah blah blah:)
Yesterday we went to the beach that is closest to Sevilla, Matalascañas, in the town of Huelva. When me and Amber left Sevilla at 11 am it was already really hot, so we thought it would be the perfect day at the beach. Well when we got there it was about 20 degrees colder and SO windy. And it also looked like it was about to rain on us for the first hour we were there. But then, all the clouds passed and even though it was still windy, it was really sunny, and I even went up to my knees in the water. The beach was nice, but the water wasn't the pretty turquoise that I love. In fact, the beach reminded me a lot of the beaches on the East coast. We took the bus back at 6 and were really tired (from working so hard during the day obviously), so we stayed in. In fact, I watched the movie The Bridge to Terabithia on Spanish TV and cried like a baby. It was a quality Saturday night.
This coming weekend begins the famous event of Semana Santa (Holy Week), which is known worldwide. It is basically an entire week filled with religious processions through the streets and thousands of flowers and candles and other good stuff. It's supposed to be amazing, but most people in Sevilla don't stay for all of it because there are so many people. The first weekend of it I think I am going to go to Madrid and Toledo, then the last weekend of it I have my trip to Portugal, then the weekend after that I have my four day trip to Morrocco with my interest group, and after that, (though it is still in the works), I am hoping to be going to Italy for part of Feria (the other huge festival here), and then it is my LAST WEEKEND before finals in Sevilla!! I will have four days completely free after finals though so I'll be able to soak in my city as much as possible before I have to leave on the 17th... :( I can't believe how fast time is going here. Which reminds me, I need to get off the computer and disfrutar la vida de sevilla!! Adios mis amores, hasta pronto.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Paris, je t´aime
Well my friends, I am safely back from my weekend in Paris and I have lots and lots to say. I'll start off by saying it was easily one of the best weekends of my entire life...absolutely amazing. I was initially very skeptical because I paid more than I planned for the plane ticket after going through hell to get it, and someone who stayed at our hostel said it was horrible, and the weather was supposed to suck, and sooo many people have had horror stories about traveling, but it was better than anything I could have ever hoped for. I'm going to go into a lot of detail because I want to remember it all while it is still fresh so this will probably be pretty long. Sorry in advance! So let me start from the beginning...
We, (we being my friends Amber, Sarah, and Janelle—the girls I roomed with in Granada, and whom I love), left at 5:30pm on Thursday night, and everything went perfectly with the flight from Sevilla to Paris. We got to Paris around 8:00 and we flew over the entire city lit up and we all had the... “oh-my-god-we're-in-Paris” moment as we saw the 'city of lights' below us. From the airport we took a taxi to our hostel...and held our breath the whole way there. To our surprise, it wasn't too bad. We slept in a room that was constantly 100 degrees and smelled like feet with 6 other people who snored and made sounds in their sleep like they were dying, but it wasn't that bad haha. The only time we spent there was to sleep, (even though with the snoring kings we didn't do much of that either), and eat our free breakfast of which we ate countless croissants and rolls with jelly. Once we were settled in we roamed the streets looking for a good place to eat and landed in a French-Italian joint with no other customers. We hadn't been in France for more than 2 hours when we realized how lucky we were to have Obama as president. I mean, aside from everything else, the world loves him, sometimes without even knowing why, which puts us in a wonderful position while traveling because the first thing our waiter said when he found out we were from the US was, “I love Obama!” haha. And on our last night we got crepes and the crepe man told us that Obama was his personal hero, and also that he liked Micheal Buble and Frank Sinatra hahaa. Anyways! So the first night we each ate an entire pizza and walked to the Eiffel Tower. One of the reasons we chose our hostel was because it boasted being only a 10 minute walk from the Tower, so we knew we had to go our first night. When we saw it in its entirety for the first time it was one of those moments of realization, (of which I've been having a lot of during this journey), really affirming it....this isn't a picture in a book...I'm really in Paris. Then it started doing its shimmery light show and we all screamed with excitement.
The next day we got up bright and early for a (FREE) 3.5 hour walking tour we heard about through our hostel that said it would take us to all the major sites in Paris. We really didn't have anything planned out or know how to get to a lot of places, so we figured we didn't have much to lose on a free tour of the city. We hopped on the metro, which was super easy and convenient to navigate, and met our guides at Saint Michel square. Honestly, the tour was one of the best things about the entire trip and I can't possibly tell you everything I learned/saw because you just won't want to read it, but I learned so much!!! I never thought I could be so interested in history, but we had an amaazzzzing guide from New Zealand, Phillip, (yes he was adorable and yes he had an accent), who was hilarious and incredibly intelligent. For instance, did you know that a German general saved Paris from being destroyed in World War II? Hitler knew he wasn't going to get Paris and he didn't want anyone else to have it so he ordered the general to burn the entire city and the general was like screw that so he lit a very small section of it on fire so that the soldiers on the border could tell Hitler it was burning, but really it was fine. If not for him, nothing of what I saw would exist. Also, when Louis XVI was beheaded they dulled the blade of the guillotine and it took about 9 times before his head came off. And also, the Lourve has over 100,000 pieces of art and can only display 35,000 of them at one time and if you looked at every piece for only 30 seconds each and took no bathroom breaks, no food breaks, no sleeping, no nothing, it would take 64 days to go through the entire museum. The Eiffel Tower was built as an entrance to the World Fair and only one person died while it was being built which is unbelieveable. Except for the guy who convince the French government to let him try his flying machine from the top of it...and flew all the way to the ground and made a dent two inches into the pavement. Epic fail. I have tons and tons of stories and history but it is too hard to make it sound coherent, especially without the pictures in front of me. But on top of the history, the guide would throw in pop culture stuff like where Jason Bourne (from the Bourne Identity) was hiding in a certain scene, or where Anne Hathaway dropped her cellphone in a fountain in The Devil Wears Prada, or, my personal favorite, the bridge where Carrie and Big meet in Paris during the finale of Sex and the City :) So on the tour we saw Notre Dame, Pont Neuf (a famous bridge with a great story of its own), the river Seine, the French Academy (where they decide what words to put in the dictionary), the Louvre, the royal gardens, the champs d'elysees, the Arc de Triumphe, the Museum of Orsay (which has the biggest collection of Van Gogh in the world), the place of Napoleon's tomb, the French Opera house, the Hotel de Ville (where all the famous and rich people stay when they come to Paris), the Egyptian obelisk, and of course the Eiffel Tower. I'm sure I'm forgetting some but still that is a lot! A lot of the stuff we saw from a distance, but even still it was useful to know where things were in relation to us and above all, the history was mesmerizing.
We ended our tour near the Arc de Triomphe so we decided to walk down the most expensive street in Paris (and I think the second most expensive in the world), to go see the Arc up close. It was much bigger than I thought, I felt like a midget beneath it. The Arc is surrounded by the biggest roundabout in the world, and also the most dangerous, because the stubborn French people refuse to put any signs on it in order to preserve its history. So in exchange they get a crash every 30 minutes.
After the Arc we marched our way to the Notre Dame, the most famous church in Paris and one of the most well known around the world. But, back in the day it was home to prostitution, gambling, and murder. Whoo! And during the French Revolution when they were killing all of the royalty and artistocrats, they thought that the apostles were wearing crowns, not halos, so they cut off all of their heads and the heads were lost for years and years until one day, pretty recently (I can remember when exactly, within the last 10-20 years), a woman was gardening and found the stone heads of all the apostles in her back yard. What luck! Anyways, inside the Notre Dame was beautiful. When we went they were in the middle of mass and it was really interesting to see. The stained glass windows were really incredible. And the architecture on the outside was amazing as well—the Notre Dame is the first building to use the architectural tool of the flying buttress which allows the walls to be thin without falling apart. A staple in Gothic style architecture, if I'm not mistaken.
A small aside that is necessary for the understanding of the next stop in our journey. During our tour, Philip told us that a certain church, called Sainte Chappelle, is famous for holding ancient relics of Christ, including the Crown of Thorns that he wore when he was crucified. Louis XIV (I may be getting the numbers on these kings wrong), bought the crown and had the church built for it, and they supposedly show it every first Friday of each month. And what would you know, we were in Paris on the first Friday of the month, so we decided we'd probably never get another chance to see the supposed crown of Christ. We went to the church and waited in line, and even went up and asked the people in charge if the crown was there today, and multiple people told us that it was. However, after going through security, paying 5 euros, and exploring the whole church, we found no crown of thorns. And after some more research with other guides we saw, we found out that they showed the crown in the Notre Dame that day, while we were there, and all we had to do was go downstairs and see it. Of course, by the time we went back to Notre Dame, it was closed, and there was no Christly crown to be seen. We saw pictures of it though and it is encased in something and you can't really see it, and I'm not too sure I really believe that King Louis got a hold of the actual Crown of Thorns...seems a little improbable that some sticks could hold their form for a few thousand years. But that's probably my bitterness talking :)
But, on the upside, Friday nights at the Lourve are free, so we hauled our bitterness to the museum before sunset and enjoyed lots of art, including the famous Mona Lisa, which is much less impressive than you might think. Especially since they have solved the two biggest mysteries about it: it is a painting of a woman named Lisa, not Davinci himself as a woman, and her facial expression is 83% happy, according to German and Canadian scientists, respectively. Once you take the mystery out of art, it is much less interesting. The Lourve was really interesting and just enormous, but all of the art we looked at was mostly religious, and I'm more interested in the impressionist styles of art, which I got to see tons of on our second day at the Orsay Museum. Lots of Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Rodin, Seurat, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, and more. I could have stayed in that museum for hours.
After our full day of culture and history we went back to the hostel and had some wine and went over our plans for the following day before passing a few sleepless hours in the 100 degree bedroom. Saturday we got up early again and made our way to the Catacombs of Paris. These were created during the time of the Bubonic Plague and there was no more room in the cemetaries for bodies so they basically created underground cemetaries, and put in the bones in designs. It was definetely creepy, and we were glad to see daylight afterwards. Later on we went to the bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre, which is where all of the artists and singers and dancers lived back in the day, and it still has its artistic charm, as well as Paris's red light district haha. We first climbed our way up to the highest point in Paris, (aside from the top of the Eiffel Tower), which is the hill where the Sacre Coeur is, another huge and gorgeous church, with quite distinct architecture. It was an amazzzzzing view of the entire city, absolutely beautiful. It was a cloudy day but as we sat on the steps and listened to a guy play his acoustic guitar and sing “Imagine”, the sun peaked out and lit up our faces...
When we had our fill of the Parisian jam session, we walked to the red light district, the home of the Moulin Rouge. We had a ton of fun going into “sex museums” and sex toy stores...unfortunately we didn't bring anything home hahaha. From the red light district we headed to the Museum of Orsay which boasts the most (or the second most, can't remember!), Van Gogh paintings in the world. It was so beautiful. I love all the work from those eras. I found a lot of artists I had forgotten about, and some I never knew. I also remembered how much I love art and art history, and how much I wish I could remember from my class in high school that I loved so much. Art history and religion are two classes I want to take when I get back to the states.
We breezed through the Orsay and headed back to our hostel to shower and get ready for the night...we were going to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower to view the City of Light from a place very few get to go in their lifetimes. On the walk there we bought baguettes and cheese and munched on our French dinner all the way there. We had planned on experiencing the Paris night life with a Pub Crawl through the same program that did our free tour, but when we got to the Eiffel we realized we would never make it there it time so we opted for the view of a lifetime rather than the hangover of a lifetime. I'm going to have to search for descriptive words again here, so I'm sorry if I repeat things I've said before....but the view of the city at night...there just aren't words honestly. My eyes were watering just taking in everything around me....the lights, the city, the wind, the stars. It was a feeling of euphoria which I've experienced before but not quite like this...there were so many feelings going through me, I just absolutely feel in love with the city in that moment.
After our romantic date with the city of Paris, we enjoyed our last French crepes and walked to a bar and watched (and participated in), some dancing at a French bar. Afterwards we made our way home and gave the city its last kiss goodnight :)
Sunday was a bit of an anxiety filled day, but we made it to the airport in time and got back to Sevilla without much trouble at all. And though I was sad to be leaving Paris, I wasn't upset about leaving 50 degrees for 80 and sunshine.
Other than Paris, everything else is going great, especially the weather. It is really hard to be sad or homesick when it is so beautiful out. Although, my birthday is coming up (tomorrow!), and it is a weird feeling to know that I won't have the people I love most here to celebrate. Aside from that, turning 21 in the states is a little different from turning 21 here, though I plan to enjoy it equally as much :) It does get me thinking about growing up and what I'm doing, what I'm going to do, what I truly want to do...what the future holds. In a matter of hours I will be a real adult, in every country of the world, and I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for it. I'm certainly not ready to get a “real” life or being an “adult”, and if I'm anything like my mother I'll never be one, which I wouldn't be too upset about :) But enough of that seriousness....I am very excited for my birthday and i've been informed by my friends here that I will be celebrating for the entire 24 hours of it, starting wednesday night at midnight. Thursday I'm going to have dinner at a good Italian place and then reeeeally celebrate :) I think when I order drinks i'm going to show them my ID anyways, just so I can have that bamf feeling haha.
As always, I miss and love you all very very much, and I hope things warm up soon for you. Also, upon my arrival in May, we will be having another, proper, United States of America, birthday party, so prepare yourselves :) I have midterms next week so I'm not sure if I'll have time to come online on Sunday but if I do I'll be on at 7pm my time, which I think is 1pm your time since you guys had daylight savings. Love youuu. Besos!
We, (we being my friends Amber, Sarah, and Janelle—the girls I roomed with in Granada, and whom I love), left at 5:30pm on Thursday night, and everything went perfectly with the flight from Sevilla to Paris. We got to Paris around 8:00 and we flew over the entire city lit up and we all had the... “oh-my-god-we're-in-Paris” moment as we saw the 'city of lights' below us. From the airport we took a taxi to our hostel...and held our breath the whole way there. To our surprise, it wasn't too bad. We slept in a room that was constantly 100 degrees and smelled like feet with 6 other people who snored and made sounds in their sleep like they were dying, but it wasn't that bad haha. The only time we spent there was to sleep, (even though with the snoring kings we didn't do much of that either), and eat our free breakfast of which we ate countless croissants and rolls with jelly. Once we were settled in we roamed the streets looking for a good place to eat and landed in a French-Italian joint with no other customers. We hadn't been in France for more than 2 hours when we realized how lucky we were to have Obama as president. I mean, aside from everything else, the world loves him, sometimes without even knowing why, which puts us in a wonderful position while traveling because the first thing our waiter said when he found out we were from the US was, “I love Obama!” haha. And on our last night we got crepes and the crepe man told us that Obama was his personal hero, and also that he liked Micheal Buble and Frank Sinatra hahaa. Anyways! So the first night we each ate an entire pizza and walked to the Eiffel Tower. One of the reasons we chose our hostel was because it boasted being only a 10 minute walk from the Tower, so we knew we had to go our first night. When we saw it in its entirety for the first time it was one of those moments of realization, (of which I've been having a lot of during this journey), really affirming it....this isn't a picture in a book...I'm really in Paris. Then it started doing its shimmery light show and we all screamed with excitement.
The next day we got up bright and early for a (FREE) 3.5 hour walking tour we heard about through our hostel that said it would take us to all the major sites in Paris. We really didn't have anything planned out or know how to get to a lot of places, so we figured we didn't have much to lose on a free tour of the city. We hopped on the metro, which was super easy and convenient to navigate, and met our guides at Saint Michel square. Honestly, the tour was one of the best things about the entire trip and I can't possibly tell you everything I learned/saw because you just won't want to read it, but I learned so much!!! I never thought I could be so interested in history, but we had an amaazzzzing guide from New Zealand, Phillip, (yes he was adorable and yes he had an accent), who was hilarious and incredibly intelligent. For instance, did you know that a German general saved Paris from being destroyed in World War II? Hitler knew he wasn't going to get Paris and he didn't want anyone else to have it so he ordered the general to burn the entire city and the general was like screw that so he lit a very small section of it on fire so that the soldiers on the border could tell Hitler it was burning, but really it was fine. If not for him, nothing of what I saw would exist. Also, when Louis XVI was beheaded they dulled the blade of the guillotine and it took about 9 times before his head came off. And also, the Lourve has over 100,000 pieces of art and can only display 35,000 of them at one time and if you looked at every piece for only 30 seconds each and took no bathroom breaks, no food breaks, no sleeping, no nothing, it would take 64 days to go through the entire museum. The Eiffel Tower was built as an entrance to the World Fair and only one person died while it was being built which is unbelieveable. Except for the guy who convince the French government to let him try his flying machine from the top of it...and flew all the way to the ground and made a dent two inches into the pavement. Epic fail. I have tons and tons of stories and history but it is too hard to make it sound coherent, especially without the pictures in front of me. But on top of the history, the guide would throw in pop culture stuff like where Jason Bourne (from the Bourne Identity) was hiding in a certain scene, or where Anne Hathaway dropped her cellphone in a fountain in The Devil Wears Prada, or, my personal favorite, the bridge where Carrie and Big meet in Paris during the finale of Sex and the City :) So on the tour we saw Notre Dame, Pont Neuf (a famous bridge with a great story of its own), the river Seine, the French Academy (where they decide what words to put in the dictionary), the Louvre, the royal gardens, the champs d'elysees, the Arc de Triumphe, the Museum of Orsay (which has the biggest collection of Van Gogh in the world), the place of Napoleon's tomb, the French Opera house, the Hotel de Ville (where all the famous and rich people stay when they come to Paris), the Egyptian obelisk, and of course the Eiffel Tower. I'm sure I'm forgetting some but still that is a lot! A lot of the stuff we saw from a distance, but even still it was useful to know where things were in relation to us and above all, the history was mesmerizing.
We ended our tour near the Arc de Triomphe so we decided to walk down the most expensive street in Paris (and I think the second most expensive in the world), to go see the Arc up close. It was much bigger than I thought, I felt like a midget beneath it. The Arc is surrounded by the biggest roundabout in the world, and also the most dangerous, because the stubborn French people refuse to put any signs on it in order to preserve its history. So in exchange they get a crash every 30 minutes.
After the Arc we marched our way to the Notre Dame, the most famous church in Paris and one of the most well known around the world. But, back in the day it was home to prostitution, gambling, and murder. Whoo! And during the French Revolution when they were killing all of the royalty and artistocrats, they thought that the apostles were wearing crowns, not halos, so they cut off all of their heads and the heads were lost for years and years until one day, pretty recently (I can remember when exactly, within the last 10-20 years), a woman was gardening and found the stone heads of all the apostles in her back yard. What luck! Anyways, inside the Notre Dame was beautiful. When we went they were in the middle of mass and it was really interesting to see. The stained glass windows were really incredible. And the architecture on the outside was amazing as well—the Notre Dame is the first building to use the architectural tool of the flying buttress which allows the walls to be thin without falling apart. A staple in Gothic style architecture, if I'm not mistaken.
A small aside that is necessary for the understanding of the next stop in our journey. During our tour, Philip told us that a certain church, called Sainte Chappelle, is famous for holding ancient relics of Christ, including the Crown of Thorns that he wore when he was crucified. Louis XIV (I may be getting the numbers on these kings wrong), bought the crown and had the church built for it, and they supposedly show it every first Friday of each month. And what would you know, we were in Paris on the first Friday of the month, so we decided we'd probably never get another chance to see the supposed crown of Christ. We went to the church and waited in line, and even went up and asked the people in charge if the crown was there today, and multiple people told us that it was. However, after going through security, paying 5 euros, and exploring the whole church, we found no crown of thorns. And after some more research with other guides we saw, we found out that they showed the crown in the Notre Dame that day, while we were there, and all we had to do was go downstairs and see it. Of course, by the time we went back to Notre Dame, it was closed, and there was no Christly crown to be seen. We saw pictures of it though and it is encased in something and you can't really see it, and I'm not too sure I really believe that King Louis got a hold of the actual Crown of Thorns...seems a little improbable that some sticks could hold their form for a few thousand years. But that's probably my bitterness talking :)
But, on the upside, Friday nights at the Lourve are free, so we hauled our bitterness to the museum before sunset and enjoyed lots of art, including the famous Mona Lisa, which is much less impressive than you might think. Especially since they have solved the two biggest mysteries about it: it is a painting of a woman named Lisa, not Davinci himself as a woman, and her facial expression is 83% happy, according to German and Canadian scientists, respectively. Once you take the mystery out of art, it is much less interesting. The Lourve was really interesting and just enormous, but all of the art we looked at was mostly religious, and I'm more interested in the impressionist styles of art, which I got to see tons of on our second day at the Orsay Museum. Lots of Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Rodin, Seurat, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, and more. I could have stayed in that museum for hours.
After our full day of culture and history we went back to the hostel and had some wine and went over our plans for the following day before passing a few sleepless hours in the 100 degree bedroom. Saturday we got up early again and made our way to the Catacombs of Paris. These were created during the time of the Bubonic Plague and there was no more room in the cemetaries for bodies so they basically created underground cemetaries, and put in the bones in designs. It was definetely creepy, and we were glad to see daylight afterwards. Later on we went to the bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre, which is where all of the artists and singers and dancers lived back in the day, and it still has its artistic charm, as well as Paris's red light district haha. We first climbed our way up to the highest point in Paris, (aside from the top of the Eiffel Tower), which is the hill where the Sacre Coeur is, another huge and gorgeous church, with quite distinct architecture. It was an amazzzzzing view of the entire city, absolutely beautiful. It was a cloudy day but as we sat on the steps and listened to a guy play his acoustic guitar and sing “Imagine”, the sun peaked out and lit up our faces...
When we had our fill of the Parisian jam session, we walked to the red light district, the home of the Moulin Rouge. We had a ton of fun going into “sex museums” and sex toy stores...unfortunately we didn't bring anything home hahaha. From the red light district we headed to the Museum of Orsay which boasts the most (or the second most, can't remember!), Van Gogh paintings in the world. It was so beautiful. I love all the work from those eras. I found a lot of artists I had forgotten about, and some I never knew. I also remembered how much I love art and art history, and how much I wish I could remember from my class in high school that I loved so much. Art history and religion are two classes I want to take when I get back to the states.
We breezed through the Orsay and headed back to our hostel to shower and get ready for the night...we were going to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower to view the City of Light from a place very few get to go in their lifetimes. On the walk there we bought baguettes and cheese and munched on our French dinner all the way there. We had planned on experiencing the Paris night life with a Pub Crawl through the same program that did our free tour, but when we got to the Eiffel we realized we would never make it there it time so we opted for the view of a lifetime rather than the hangover of a lifetime. I'm going to have to search for descriptive words again here, so I'm sorry if I repeat things I've said before....but the view of the city at night...there just aren't words honestly. My eyes were watering just taking in everything around me....the lights, the city, the wind, the stars. It was a feeling of euphoria which I've experienced before but not quite like this...there were so many feelings going through me, I just absolutely feel in love with the city in that moment.
After our romantic date with the city of Paris, we enjoyed our last French crepes and walked to a bar and watched (and participated in), some dancing at a French bar. Afterwards we made our way home and gave the city its last kiss goodnight :)
Sunday was a bit of an anxiety filled day, but we made it to the airport in time and got back to Sevilla without much trouble at all. And though I was sad to be leaving Paris, I wasn't upset about leaving 50 degrees for 80 and sunshine.
Other than Paris, everything else is going great, especially the weather. It is really hard to be sad or homesick when it is so beautiful out. Although, my birthday is coming up (tomorrow!), and it is a weird feeling to know that I won't have the people I love most here to celebrate. Aside from that, turning 21 in the states is a little different from turning 21 here, though I plan to enjoy it equally as much :) It does get me thinking about growing up and what I'm doing, what I'm going to do, what I truly want to do...what the future holds. In a matter of hours I will be a real adult, in every country of the world, and I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for it. I'm certainly not ready to get a “real” life or being an “adult”, and if I'm anything like my mother I'll never be one, which I wouldn't be too upset about :) But enough of that seriousness....I am very excited for my birthday and i've been informed by my friends here that I will be celebrating for the entire 24 hours of it, starting wednesday night at midnight. Thursday I'm going to have dinner at a good Italian place and then reeeeally celebrate :) I think when I order drinks i'm going to show them my ID anyways, just so I can have that bamf feeling haha.
As always, I miss and love you all very very much, and I hope things warm up soon for you. Also, upon my arrival in May, we will be having another, proper, United States of America, birthday party, so prepare yourselves :) I have midterms next week so I'm not sure if I'll have time to come online on Sunday but if I do I'll be on at 7pm my time, which I think is 1pm your time since you guys had daylight savings. Love youuu. Besos!
Monday, March 2, 2009
La edad del pavo
Sorry for taking so long to update! I know some of you (ahem, Kim), have no life and read this religiously so my bad for the delay. For explanation of the title, you´ll have to read the last few paragraphs.
Sevilla is still beautiful, we haven't had rain in like two weeks and it has been absolutely cloudless and sunny, with temperatures around 70-75 degrees. I heard you guys just got some more snow...can't say I'm missing it! Just a couple degrees warmer and it will be perfect weather here and I won't even need a jacket. But before you know it I will be complaining about the heat! I love it though because it smells like spring.....mmm.
There isn't too much to inform about right now, just getting into the grind again with school. It is less work but it is still more work than I would like to do when i'm trying to experience the world hah. I am really enjoying most of my classes though, especially Contemporary Literature and my Film class. I think analyzing literature and film is so interesting and you can see all the symbols and foreshadowing, etc that the author put into their work. I also really love my teacher for my lit class, she seems like a total feminist, which those who know me well, know that I love :)
Going on a bit of a feminist tangent, I want to write about something here that has really affected me, which is gender roles, but more specifically, violence to women. A few weeks ago a 16 year old girl went missing and since then they found out that her ex-boyfriend killed her and threw her in the river, and they are continuing to look for her body. The reason he did it was because they were dating and he had another girlfriend besides her so she started dating someone else. Which according to him, and many like him, was okay for him to do but not her. This case is getting tonnns of media attention in Spain right now, her parents just talked to president Zapatero to try and change the laws because the boy that helped her ex-boyfriend kill her is only going to go to jail for 6 months. I'm not sure how long the ex-boyfriend will be in jail but my teacher said that because he's young and a boy it won't be that long, especially if they can't find her body. Aside from the Marta case, literally every single day on the news there is another woman who was killed by her husband or boyfriend. Yesterday there were two within 24 hours. Sorry for the downer paragraph but it is just something that has really bothered me since I've been here and a huge part of Spain that I hate and I'll never understand. It has also given me ideas about maybe someday coming back and working at a women's center here..who knows. Also, it has made me all the more hesitant about finding a spanish lover :)
Back to good stuff!! This last weekend we went to Cadiz, which is on the south coast of Spain and its where a lot of people go for the beach. However, we went for the infamous and internationally known party, Carnavales, which is, from what I could tell, a lot like Halloween in the states. In fact, it was pretty much exactly Madison Halloween, with more public urination. And yes, of course I wore sandals that were completely soaked by the end of the night. I will continue to tell myself it was water. Before we left for Cadiz, my friend Amber and I chilled on top of her apartment building and enjoyed my first of the wonderful Spanish tradition of the “botellon”, which is a huge bottle of Spanish beer that costs like fifty cents. Aside from the beer, it was really cool on top of the roof and we could see the whole city. We were up there until sunset and took a bus to Cadiz at 8 pm and got back at 6am. It was a looong night. Which ended in me taking my first bite of red meat in over 8 years...from a Burger King hamburger. A bad choice for my first taste of “cow” in awhile. I don't think I'll have a problem staying away from that anymore. In my defense I was starving and they don't have magical places like Ian's or Toppers in Spain...oh the days of late night mac and cheese pizza...I long for you. So we didn't get back to Sevilla until like 6 am which meant that I spent the whole next day making a route around my house from my bed, to the bathroom, to the kitchen, and back to bed. On one of the trips to the bathroom I did make it into the shower, and brought my shoes with me, so they are clean...pretty clean anyway...
EXCITING NEWS!!! I booked a ticket to Paris for next weekend!!! It was a huge pain in the ass that I don't even want to get into but I am actually going to Paris. I can't believe it. We also just got a hostel that is apparently 10 minutes walking from the Eiffel Tower and 23 euros a night. I'm going with the three girls that I spent the weekend in Granada with, so I'm really excited. Now I just need to pray that everything goes according to plan because I've heard so many traveling horror stories. No matter what I'm sure I'll have lots of things to say for my next blog.
Last night was really fun because I met up with my Spanish friend Carlos who I've met a few times but always at a club when you can't hear anything, so it was nice to actually talk to him. And me and my friends talked almost the whole night in Spanish!! Once I start talking I can feel it coming easier and easier, I just really need to speak in Spanish to my American friends too. We also met two guys from PARIS last night, who of course after only one year of Spanish, were completely fluent. And fluent in English as well. God damn Europe worldly-ness.
Tomorrow is Pepita's birthday so all her sons and daughter and their husbands and wives and grandkids are here...and her house is not that big so right now it is chuck full of crazy Spanish family. The two grandaughters are precious. The older one, Maria, is thirteen and her sister Ana is almost three. Ana is sooooooo cute! Ah! And she is enrolled in a bilingual school where she learns equal amounts of English and Spanish. We sang Happy Birthday in English together haha. Pepita told me she knows more English than Spanish. She is two years old! She is going to have such an advantage when she gets older. It's crazy here how knowing a second language is basically expected in Europe, and it isn't unusual for someone to know three or four. I'm so jealous, especially when I've spent the better part of my life trying to master just a second language. Ayyy madre mia! After I get back from Cordoba tomorrow I'm probably going to be thrown into a pit of Spanish Birthday celebrations. I think I'll resort to talking to the bilingual two year old.
Now it is Sunday and I'm recuperating from a weekend of ninos. Yesterday we went to Cordoba and saw the famous Catedral-Mesquita. It is really interesting and strange at the same time. It was made in many parts and depending on who was in charge at the time (the Muslims or the Christians), they would add certain things and take others away and such. There is a HUGE cathedral right in the middle of the mosque, it was crazy! I have never gone to church regularly or considered myself a religious person, but whenever I have gone into a big religious monument, I feel myself on the verge of tears for no apparent reason. Its really weird.
After the Mesquita, we rode the bus to a town about 45 minutes outside of Cordoba to one of the oldest and finest wineries in Spain for a tour and tasting!! Whoo! We stepped into the warehouse where a tonnnnnnnnnnnnnn of wine is stored in big wooden barrels and all I could think about was how much my mom would love it, and my aunt too :) The smell alone was intoxicating....a mix of aging wine and cedar. I never wanted to stop inhaling!! After the tour we got to try three types of wine; a dry appetizer wine, a semi sweet wine, and a very sweet dessert wine. The first one was pretty strong, I liked the second the best even though it was still pretty sweet, and the third one was really weird. It literally tasted like liquid raisins, and looked like it too. It was dark and almost thick...I wasn't a huge fan. I really like Cordoba but it was nothing compared to Granada, and it was of course raining for the first time in two weeks, but I still had fun.
Now today I had probably the most authentic Spanish experience since I've been here, even more than the soccer game. Alllll of Pepita's daughters and sons and their wives and kids were at the house celebrating her birthday and it was just a huge fiesta of food and laughing and music and dancing. It reminded me SO much of our Thanksgivings or big family birthdays or Christmas dinners at home. Except for the fact that they all can play the guitar so well and dance Flamenco and sing Flamenco cantes...it was so amazing to be a part of. And one of her sons, Anival, was so much like Uncle Tim, it was hilarious. Drinking and making jokes about everything, it was so funny. And two of her sons reminded me of me and Lucy because even though they are old (30s or 40s), they were wrestling and just cracking up at everything each other said. Now that I think of it, Jesus was more like my mom because he still has, as they say “la edad del pavo” which literally means the age of the turkey, ie. An adolescent pest. And seeing how Pepita interacted with her kids and grandkids was like a spitting image of my grandmas at home. I literally had to hold back tears at some points, sometimes because I was laughing so much, and sometimes because I wished so badly it was my own family sitting around the table. Even though I couldn't understand everything, I still felt like I was a part of it. They even asked me about the word “cheesehead” hahah. And little Ana fell in love with me too. We played all weekend together and she made me promise to come to visit her in Medida (about 200 km from Sevilla). I took pictures and a video of her singing “Happy Birthday” in English. What a peach. Well my friends, as always, I'm thinking of you all every minute of the day, and hope that everything is good even without my face around :) I should have pictures up from the weekend very soon, and it won't be long until the next blog because I'm going to PARIS next weekend!!! AH! La vida la vida la vida!
Sevilla is still beautiful, we haven't had rain in like two weeks and it has been absolutely cloudless and sunny, with temperatures around 70-75 degrees. I heard you guys just got some more snow...can't say I'm missing it! Just a couple degrees warmer and it will be perfect weather here and I won't even need a jacket. But before you know it I will be complaining about the heat! I love it though because it smells like spring.....mmm.
There isn't too much to inform about right now, just getting into the grind again with school. It is less work but it is still more work than I would like to do when i'm trying to experience the world hah. I am really enjoying most of my classes though, especially Contemporary Literature and my Film class. I think analyzing literature and film is so interesting and you can see all the symbols and foreshadowing, etc that the author put into their work. I also really love my teacher for my lit class, she seems like a total feminist, which those who know me well, know that I love :)
Going on a bit of a feminist tangent, I want to write about something here that has really affected me, which is gender roles, but more specifically, violence to women. A few weeks ago a 16 year old girl went missing and since then they found out that her ex-boyfriend killed her and threw her in the river, and they are continuing to look for her body. The reason he did it was because they were dating and he had another girlfriend besides her so she started dating someone else. Which according to him, and many like him, was okay for him to do but not her. This case is getting tonnns of media attention in Spain right now, her parents just talked to president Zapatero to try and change the laws because the boy that helped her ex-boyfriend kill her is only going to go to jail for 6 months. I'm not sure how long the ex-boyfriend will be in jail but my teacher said that because he's young and a boy it won't be that long, especially if they can't find her body. Aside from the Marta case, literally every single day on the news there is another woman who was killed by her husband or boyfriend. Yesterday there were two within 24 hours. Sorry for the downer paragraph but it is just something that has really bothered me since I've been here and a huge part of Spain that I hate and I'll never understand. It has also given me ideas about maybe someday coming back and working at a women's center here..who knows. Also, it has made me all the more hesitant about finding a spanish lover :)
Back to good stuff!! This last weekend we went to Cadiz, which is on the south coast of Spain and its where a lot of people go for the beach. However, we went for the infamous and internationally known party, Carnavales, which is, from what I could tell, a lot like Halloween in the states. In fact, it was pretty much exactly Madison Halloween, with more public urination. And yes, of course I wore sandals that were completely soaked by the end of the night. I will continue to tell myself it was water. Before we left for Cadiz, my friend Amber and I chilled on top of her apartment building and enjoyed my first of the wonderful Spanish tradition of the “botellon”, which is a huge bottle of Spanish beer that costs like fifty cents. Aside from the beer, it was really cool on top of the roof and we could see the whole city. We were up there until sunset and took a bus to Cadiz at 8 pm and got back at 6am. It was a looong night. Which ended in me taking my first bite of red meat in over 8 years...from a Burger King hamburger. A bad choice for my first taste of “cow” in awhile. I don't think I'll have a problem staying away from that anymore. In my defense I was starving and they don't have magical places like Ian's or Toppers in Spain...oh the days of late night mac and cheese pizza...I long for you. So we didn't get back to Sevilla until like 6 am which meant that I spent the whole next day making a route around my house from my bed, to the bathroom, to the kitchen, and back to bed. On one of the trips to the bathroom I did make it into the shower, and brought my shoes with me, so they are clean...pretty clean anyway...
EXCITING NEWS!!! I booked a ticket to Paris for next weekend!!! It was a huge pain in the ass that I don't even want to get into but I am actually going to Paris. I can't believe it. We also just got a hostel that is apparently 10 minutes walking from the Eiffel Tower and 23 euros a night. I'm going with the three girls that I spent the weekend in Granada with, so I'm really excited. Now I just need to pray that everything goes according to plan because I've heard so many traveling horror stories. No matter what I'm sure I'll have lots of things to say for my next blog.
Last night was really fun because I met up with my Spanish friend Carlos who I've met a few times but always at a club when you can't hear anything, so it was nice to actually talk to him. And me and my friends talked almost the whole night in Spanish!! Once I start talking I can feel it coming easier and easier, I just really need to speak in Spanish to my American friends too. We also met two guys from PARIS last night, who of course after only one year of Spanish, were completely fluent. And fluent in English as well. God damn Europe worldly-ness.
Tomorrow is Pepita's birthday so all her sons and daughter and their husbands and wives and grandkids are here...and her house is not that big so right now it is chuck full of crazy Spanish family. The two grandaughters are precious. The older one, Maria, is thirteen and her sister Ana is almost three. Ana is sooooooo cute! Ah! And she is enrolled in a bilingual school where she learns equal amounts of English and Spanish. We sang Happy Birthday in English together haha. Pepita told me she knows more English than Spanish. She is two years old! She is going to have such an advantage when she gets older. It's crazy here how knowing a second language is basically expected in Europe, and it isn't unusual for someone to know three or four. I'm so jealous, especially when I've spent the better part of my life trying to master just a second language. Ayyy madre mia! After I get back from Cordoba tomorrow I'm probably going to be thrown into a pit of Spanish Birthday celebrations. I think I'll resort to talking to the bilingual two year old.
Now it is Sunday and I'm recuperating from a weekend of ninos. Yesterday we went to Cordoba and saw the famous Catedral-Mesquita. It is really interesting and strange at the same time. It was made in many parts and depending on who was in charge at the time (the Muslims or the Christians), they would add certain things and take others away and such. There is a HUGE cathedral right in the middle of the mosque, it was crazy! I have never gone to church regularly or considered myself a religious person, but whenever I have gone into a big religious monument, I feel myself on the verge of tears for no apparent reason. Its really weird.
After the Mesquita, we rode the bus to a town about 45 minutes outside of Cordoba to one of the oldest and finest wineries in Spain for a tour and tasting!! Whoo! We stepped into the warehouse where a tonnnnnnnnnnnnnn of wine is stored in big wooden barrels and all I could think about was how much my mom would love it, and my aunt too :) The smell alone was intoxicating....a mix of aging wine and cedar. I never wanted to stop inhaling!! After the tour we got to try three types of wine; a dry appetizer wine, a semi sweet wine, and a very sweet dessert wine. The first one was pretty strong, I liked the second the best even though it was still pretty sweet, and the third one was really weird. It literally tasted like liquid raisins, and looked like it too. It was dark and almost thick...I wasn't a huge fan. I really like Cordoba but it was nothing compared to Granada, and it was of course raining for the first time in two weeks, but I still had fun.
Now today I had probably the most authentic Spanish experience since I've been here, even more than the soccer game. Alllll of Pepita's daughters and sons and their wives and kids were at the house celebrating her birthday and it was just a huge fiesta of food and laughing and music and dancing. It reminded me SO much of our Thanksgivings or big family birthdays or Christmas dinners at home. Except for the fact that they all can play the guitar so well and dance Flamenco and sing Flamenco cantes...it was so amazing to be a part of. And one of her sons, Anival, was so much like Uncle Tim, it was hilarious. Drinking and making jokes about everything, it was so funny. And two of her sons reminded me of me and Lucy because even though they are old (30s or 40s), they were wrestling and just cracking up at everything each other said. Now that I think of it, Jesus was more like my mom because he still has, as they say “la edad del pavo” which literally means the age of the turkey, ie. An adolescent pest. And seeing how Pepita interacted with her kids and grandkids was like a spitting image of my grandmas at home. I literally had to hold back tears at some points, sometimes because I was laughing so much, and sometimes because I wished so badly it was my own family sitting around the table. Even though I couldn't understand everything, I still felt like I was a part of it. They even asked me about the word “cheesehead” hahah. And little Ana fell in love with me too. We played all weekend together and she made me promise to come to visit her in Medida (about 200 km from Sevilla). I took pictures and a video of her singing “Happy Birthday” in English. What a peach. Well my friends, as always, I'm thinking of you all every minute of the day, and hope that everything is good even without my face around :) I should have pictures up from the weekend very soon, and it won't be long until the next blog because I'm going to PARIS next weekend!!! AH! La vida la vida la vida!
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