April 2012
1 post
July 2011
10 posts
“El pelo mal cortado, a las ocho días igualado”
– Fernando - it means that if you get a bad haircut, in 8 days you’ll be guapo anyway… quite useful
“Las lentejas, si quieres las come. Si no quieres, las deja”
– Fernando - a saying about one of my favorite meals our padres cook. It means if you want the lentils, eat them… if you don’t want them, don’t eat them, lol very deep
Last Week!
So this has been our last week in Salamanca and I feel badly cause I haven’t tumbled for a while, but I’ve been really busy trying to jam in all the Salamanca adventures and homework as possible. Plus the internet is unbelievably terrible everywhere, so I’m excited to back in the wi-fi filled USA. In the past few days we’ve seen the final Harry Potter movie premier in...
Tapas
Tyler, Shanananananaon, and I went to tapas two days ago with a group of kids from Sampere. All in all there were about 8 of us: 3 from the U.S., 1 from Canada, 2 from France and 1 from Belgium. It was really cool getting to practice Spanish and meet kids who didn’t speak English but through all of our attempts at Spanish we could understand each other perfectly well! The guy from...
Watch
Plaza Mayor
Plaza mayor is the best hang out spot in Salamanca and it is amazing! It was the scene of the movie Vanage Point, but until you see it in person you just can’t understand. I took a panoramic to try and get the best nighttime view possible… check it out!
Discovering Lego-Bacon-Jesus in Portugal!
This weekend we took a trip to Portugal and it was far from the ideal, problem-free vision of a weekend trip that we had in our minds, but it was awesome nonetheless. Our first troubles happened when we bought the tickets for the bus ride there. We all went as a group to avoid any discrepancy there could be between our tickets if we all bought the separately… Unfortunately that also meant...
Tour of Andalusia pt. 2
Good cliff hanger right?! Haha, the next morning, we packed up and headed on over to Gibraltar to see Africa and some monkeys! Gibraltar is a British possession right on the tip of the Iberian Peninsula that is so close to Africa you can see it from the shore.
Because of this cultural confusion, many people speak the most intense Spanglish you can imagine, except they don’t call it Spanglish,...
Kira!!
So our Madre and Padre’s daughter came over the other day with her two daughters and their brand new 3 month old french bulldog puppy! It made me miss our dogs so much, but it was awesome to get to play with a dog again.
June 2011
21 posts
Tour of Andalusia pt. 3
Granada is an amazing city with a gigantic Moorish influence. It has tons of little markets full of teas, tapestries, hookahs, knives, incense, lanterns, and other middle eastern items.
We arrived in Granada and visited many of these little markets, ate the best italian gelato I’ve ever had, and took in the views of the city. That night we ate dinner and had a little spat with the waiters… They...
Tour of Andalusia
For the past week we have been driving around Andalusia (the south of Spain) and taking in all of the unique sights it has to offer. I didn’t have a reliable source of Wi-Fi, so I wasn’t able to update the Tumblr, but now I’m gonna give a quick run through.
First we stopped at a place in La Mancha that had tons of old fashioned windmills. These are he same windmills that Don...
The past week
We’ve done a lot in the past week and taken even more pictures, so in the spirit of tumblr and because pictures are way more fun than reading, I’m going to share it all through interpretive and strategic picture posting… Haha, here we go:
The Museum of Natural Science:
El Teleférico:
El Escorial:
El Castillo de Manzanares:
Boats in Retiro:
And that was the...
Youth Night
Friday night the youth from the church invited all of us to go to a concert that they were putting on for us! I didn’t really know what to expect, but thought it would be fun to go hang out and listen to some music. When we arrived, they had the stage set up ready for a jam session! They started with some christian worship songs, in Spanish of course. We then went into the lobby and played...
Done!
Wow, I can’t believe it but the Madrid portion of the trip is almost over! I just finished my 2 finals, took my oral exam yesterday, and have all of the written assignments ready to turn in… Whew! These past few days have been crazy, but it’s finally over :) Now I have the whole long weekend and the weeklong excursion in Andalusia to look forward to! It’s incredibly hot and...
Alicante!
This weekend we took a trip down to Alicante. It’s a port city right below Valencia but is still a part of the comunidad valenciana. We booked seats on a train to get there cheap and relatively fast, plus we had never ridden a train before and we wanted to know what it would be like. After a close call, nearly missing the train we were safely aboard the train and headed to our relaxing weekend...
Back to the grind
So school is back in full swing with midterms being over. Now that they’re in the morning I have tons of time for activities in the afternoon! It’s awesome even though I usually end up sleeping for a while, u know soaking in the Spanish siesta, lol. The weather’s been really rainy here which is odd, but a blessing at the same time. The Madrid area of Spain doesn’t get too...
“¡Me cago en la leche!”
– Monica - to be used when suprised
Toledo and more!
So this past weekend we went to Toledo! It is fantastic! I has a completely different feel than Segovia, though it’s just as quaint and astounding. Toledo has a rich religious history with multiple changes of power between the Christians, Muslims, and Jews. At one point it even was the head of the Catholic church and the home of the Pope! This explains why the buildings, art, and atmosphere...
School....
I haven’t been able to post for the last few days because we had midterms coming up and things got really busy fast. Fortunately, they’re over and I think they went pretty well, lol …. we’ll see.
Tomorrow we head over to Toledo for a day trip! I’m so excited! I’ve heard great things about it and I after finding this picture, I can tell its got lots of...
WatchThis is the band that we went to see with some of the youth from the church!
“The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.”
– - Chiqui (quoting Confucius… in Spanish, lol)
May 2011
11 posts
“Word of the day: ‘Cucurucho’ - a paper cone… also used for...”
Churros (the real deal!)
Spain has many legendary dishes, such as paella, spanish ham, and flan, but nothing has been more legendary in my mind than the Spanish churro. In America, the churro is a long stick of fried dough, covered in cinnamon sugar that is consumed by hordes of tourists at theme parks and county fairs. Delicious, yet not exactly classy, lol. When I found out that I would be going to Spain this summer, I...
El Rastro
Sunday morning greeted me after a full 12 hour night sleep, lol fantastic! That’s a treat in any country. I got up around 10 and started getting ready to head to El Rastro, the weekly sunday market. El Rastro is the Spanish equivalent of a flea market and it has everything from dog toys to original paintings to socks of every shape and size you can imagine. Since it only happens once a...
Segovia
This saturday, we took a trip to Segovia. It is a city that is much smaller than Madrid and has a completely different feel. Some of the main attractions of Segovia are the extremely well preserved Roman Aquaduct, the Alcázar de Segovia, and the Cathedral.
(Julia and I at the Aquaduct)
After stopping at the aquaduct, we had an hour to look around in our tour groups before we headed to the...
FOOD!
Spain must be constantly hungry, because I have been for the past 5 days! It’s not that we don’t eat, cause Chiqui makes us delicious and healthy food, but everything is smaller and less filling here. Breakfast is always just bread… and the lunch is usually soup and a meat or something unique… and then dinner is a salad and fish or pasta. Lots of variety… BUT lunch...
Retiro
Julia, Ashley (Her roommate) and I went for a run in Retiro park this morning. Retiro is gigantic! The park has so many statues, gardens, buildings and playgrounds you could walk and walk and walk and never see all of it.
As I was trying to find Julia in the park I came across some older people sitting on a bench and all making really odd movements with their legs like they were trying to reach...
Sunday Adventures
On our first full day in Madrid, we were supposed to meet at the school at 11:00 to get oriented, schedule classes, take a tour, and go to church. Unfortunately, our house is pretty far away from the school and we didn’t realize how involved getting to the school would be, so we arrived late to the first meeting. Workman was not a happy camper, but it was the first day and we were still...
3 tags
Finally Here!
So this is the first time I have posted anything to Tumblr, but hopefully I’ll figure it out quickly so i can keep in touch with everyone back home! We left Jacksonville International Airport at 11:04 am to fly to Atlanta where we met up with the group from Samford and headed for Spain. There is a 6 hour time difference which, paired up with the 9 hour flight, means that we arrived in Madrid...
