Dad’s 45^th birthday.  Today was Spanish Labor Day, so we didn’t have school.  Around noon my familia and I piled in the car and drove up north to the coast of Verdicio/Cabo Penas.  It’s the community where Pablo’s parents have their beach house, but we went to an outside lunch/picnic at their friend’s house, Ana and Miguel.  There were about 6 Spanish couples and my familia of 5 there.  I try and hide my American-ness in situations like that, but after awhile they hear my accent and know something’s up.  We ate, what else, Fabada Asturiana (beans, chorizo, pork).  Then we went to get some coffee, and took a walk along the beautiful beach.  Besides being a little cool and breezy, the weather was pretty nice and sunny.  A bunch of their friends are surfers there, so we watched them for a bit, and my pants ended up getting soaked when I was wading

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Today we made the rounds to all of the neighborhood establishments that we usually go to: Loyfre’s below our apartment, Casa Tina on the corner, and Diavolo down the street.  My padres walk in and know everyone, and by this time, so do I.  Madrid and Barcelona had a big soccer match going, so all the men had their eyes glued to the TVs (Barcelona won, 6-2).  Around 10PM we had dinner at home, and then Monica and I went out.  We started making the rounds again, gathering more friends at each stop.  We were at Casa Tina for quite awhile, talking with everyone there and having a genuinely good time.  Around 3AM, yes, AM, Monica, her sister Ines, Ana, Ana’s husband, Jolie, and I went to Karaoke until 6AM.  These ladies are pros, I’m telling ya.  It was kind of ridiculous.  Monica, Ines, and I sang “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees, and “Me Voy” by Julieta Venegas.  When we left we went to Ines’ house to talk more.  We walked into the kitchen of our piso at 7:40AM, no joke.  The best part was that I found out that aunt Ines and her friend that was with us, Jolie, used to be cage dancers back in their day, and my host mom and her other friend that was with us, Ana, are cleaning ladies.  So, I party with cage dancers and cleaning ladies.  Awesome.

Monica, Ines, and I

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Spanish Mother’s Day.  At 2PM the whole crew (my family of four, abuela, three other siblings and their families, and a niece and her family) went to Loyfre’s.  I gave Monica her mother’s day present, a photo album with all of the pictures she wanted all printed off and nicely arranged.  She loved it, although, Alejandra was in love with it and was laughing and giggling at all the pictures.  Then half of them went to another restaurant, and we went upstairs in Loyfre’s to eat lunch.  It was delish.  I had octopus and shrimp salad with lettuce and baked potato pieces. (I LOVE OCTOPUS!) Then I had “rape” fish and clams.  We sat there at the table forever, talking, friends and their kids coming and going and visiting with us.  For dinner I made pancakes while Monica made scrambled eggs.  They don’t do pancakes here, so it was a first for all of them, and I had to teach them that you put butter and syrup on them and cut them up.  Nico loved it because he’s seen pancakes on The Simpons for years and always wanted to eat them.

4-wheeling in the mountains

High Ropes Course

Flying

Our program coordinators, Luna and Paula, along with some friends, Kristi Chapa and Bethany Morishe, and I drove an hour to the mountain town of Cangas de Onis for some extreme sports today.  We left Oviedo around 11AM, got there around noon (drove through the gorgeous Asturian mountains), and saw the Puente Romana (Romanic bridge…old…famous).  Bethany, Kristi, and I rented 4-wheelers and went on a guided tour.  There were three girls on our tour that flipped their quads on the rocks and got all scratched up on their faces and arms.  I didn’t think it was that difficult, but many Europeans can’t even drive cars, let alone extreme sports vehicles!  When our guide was helping those girls, I took off going super-fast down the gravel road just because I had a need for speed (I’ve got videos to prove it).  Afterwards, we all went and grabbed lunch at a restaurant.  Around 4:00 we went to a high ropes course just outside of town.  It was super fun!  There were eight courses, consecutively increasing in difficulty and height off the ground.  We all were wearing harnesses and had to clip and unclip ourselves from tightrope bridge to tightrope bridge.  To get down from each level we zip lined down, which was my favorite, especially went I flipped myself upside down like I learned to do at summer camp.  The only bad part was that on the sixth level it started to downpour, and I was stuck up in a tree with nowhere to go.  Soaking wet would be an understatement…but I lived.  After the ropes course we found a randomly nice hostel in town, showered up, and played cards in the room until 11PM.  Then Luna and Paula called up one of their guy friends that lives there, and we all went out for pizza.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

We got up around noon, checked out of the hostel, shopped a bit at their cute Sunday morning market, and then drove back to Oviedo.  I ran home quick and changed and then went down the street to the grandma’s house for Alejandra’s 2^nd Birthday party.  It was a whole lotta food and whole lotta Spanish familia.  I gave her some Hello Kitty toys and a framed picture of her at the park (the pic was more for Monica).  Here it is:

Alejandra, age 2

Afterwards, Monica and I went to Diavolo, the restaurant down the street where her sister and friends work.  We were there for five hours…no joke.  My brain had a major Spanish overload!

We woke up at 3:30AM to catch our 6:30AM flight to Madrid.  At 1PM we took the high-speed train from Madrid to Sevilla.  When we got to Sevilla, we were grateful that our hostel actually existed, and we had some dinner and then went to go check out the Holy Week processions in the streets.  There were sooo many people, all dressed in their Sunday best!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

We got up early and took the bus an hour south to the beautiful beach town of Cadiz.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the never-ending beach was powdery soft and white.  We literally did nothing except lay out, read, nap, and swim a little until 5PM!  Rough, I know.  Then we caught the bus back to Sevilla, showered up, and made some dinner in the common kitchen of our hostel.  Thursday night is known for being the busiest night of Holy Week, so we went out around 11PM to see what it was all about.  The processions were running literally all night, until 6AM, and it was gobs of people watching men in robes and pointy hats (similar to the KKK in the US), and then a 1000 lb. gold float of Jesus or Mary being carried by a group of 30-40 men.  The “floats” “live” in each neighborhood’s Catholic church and are only brought out and paraded through the city streets once a year.  The men that carry the float and the ones in the pointy hats and robes are part of each neighborhood’s brotherhood, and it is a big honor to participate.  There was also this nasty incense they would burn, people singing from balconies, and drums and trumpets playing traditional songs.  It was quite the sight.  We saw the most famous one that started at 2AM, so that was cool, and stayed out until 4AM, which was early to call it a night.

Friday, April 10, 2009

We got up and went souvenir shopping and sight-seeing.  It’s crazy how much different Sevilla feels than even Madrid, Barcelona, or Oviedo.  Their weather is almost always warm and sunny, and their narrow streets wind every which way.  Very unique.  The influence of Flamenco dancing is everywhere, too.  Around 6PM we went to go check in to our third hotel.  We had to hotel-hop because everything was so full—and we even booked way back in February!  So we navigate our way to this hotel on the outskirts of town in a sketchy neighborhood.  As we arrive, we realize that this is NOT a hotel—it’s a house!  What the heck?!  Not again!!  We asked an older couple walking down the street if they knew who lived there, to which the man replied that his niece used to live there, and that it was definitely a house.  (Blank stares.)  This is when I started to kind of break down and started crying in the middle of the street.  The entire city, from the lowest hostel to the best five-star hotel, was completely booked.  We had nowhere to spend the night for not one, but two nights.  We were at a loss.  The other girls told me to stop crying in this neighborhood and showing any weakness, like we could be easy targets for something as obvious tourists with our luggage.  I was beyond angry that someone would fool us into booking with them and taking a 10% down payment from us.  We went back to the city center and went to the bus station.  Our only option was to go back to Oviedo three days early.  So we changed our tickets, got some McDonald’s (American comfort food at our fingertips, thank you capitalism), and had to call our host parents to tell them about our change of plans.  Eleven hours later we were back in Oviedo.

Sunday, April 12, 2009  Easter

My host parents were up north at my host dad’s parent’s beach house, so I caught the bus up there to spend the day with all of them and the grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins.  It was a relatively nice day, and we went all the way up to the most northern part of Asturias called Cabo Penas.  It is pretty much this six-story drop with crazy jagged rocks at the bottom (where, I was told, was where their dictator Francisco Franco would make his enemies jump to their death).  Pablo’s mom made the most typical Asturian dish: Fabada.  It’s big white kidney beans that simmer overnight and three types of “chorizo”, or blood sausage.  We eat it at least once a week with my host family.  Another dish we eat a lot is called tortilla Espanola, and it’s basically egg bake, but only with potatoes and eggs.  Before lunch we walked around the big loop of the gated community and stopped at a restaurant where I unknowingly ate a bowl of pig intestines.  After lunch the kids had an Easter egg hunt at their German neighbor’s house.  Since Spain has been so extremely Catholic for so long, they haven’t quite caught on to the whole Easter bunny thing…or Santa Claus…or Halloween.  I took some really cute pictures of my host parents with their kids, so I’m going to print them off and put them in a mini album to give to my host mom for mother’s day.  I’m also going to blow one up of all of us and frame it and give it to them as a parting gift (they don’t do the whole ‘family portrait’ thing here, either).

This week we’re taking a break from normal classes and have a week of mini-classes.  I’m in photojournalism and press.  For photojournalism my group is doing gastronomy of Asturias (our region) and Spain, so we took pictures of things like the pig legs that hang in grocery stores, all their types of cheese, seafood, paella, tortilla espanola, bakeries and pastries, fruit and candy stores, aisles of olive oil, and their apple drink, Sidra.  And, yes, I’ve been getting the recipes for the yummy stuff.

Procession at 3AM

I was here 4 yrs ago!

My host family

It would be good to let you readers know that the group of 14 of us UNI kids returned to Oviedo from a long weekend in Paris by autobus this morning at 11AM.  I then came home, unpacked, went to school (the only day for the next two weeks), blogged, Skyped with mom and dad, and caught up on mountainous amounts of emails.  Around 10PM I found out that we could only bring one suitcase to Rome between the four of us girls, much of which was to be full of food.  We were all running around frantically, and I stayed up until 4AM packing (after talking to my padres for a few hours).

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Got up at 6AM.  Ashley, Kristi, Trisha, and I left the Oviedo bus station at 7:30AM to go fly out of Santander.  We took the Supera bus—complete with a bus attendant, a free sandwich and chocolate, and a movie.  When we got to the airport check-in, our suitcase was 30 lbs. overweight.  So we had to go into the bathroom and throw away jars of peanut butter (AKA liquid gold), jelly, rice, pasta, granola, cans of veggies, etc.  The bin was overflowing, and we really hoped that someone would find it all and take it home.  L  We also stuffed food into our backpacks, which were already full with our clothes for the 13-day vacation.  When we arrived in Rome around 4PM we caught a bus into the city.  We found our hostel that we had booked for all 7 nights in Rome.  It was a pretty sketchy neighborhood, and the place was looking pretty dark.  We rang the doorbell, and no one.  We called the number from their website we had just been on the day before, and the number had been disconnected.  Uh oh.  Randomly this old Italian man walks by and asks us if we’re here for the hostel.  We told him yes and asked what was going on.  Apparently two weeks prior the place had been shut down by the police because it was too dirty and they were cramming something like 30 people into each bedroom.  (Silence) Wow, okay, umm, now what?  The old man offered to take us up to the fourth floor to see the police notice on the door, but he said he could only take two of us at a time, soo um, thanks dude, but no thanks.  Then he disappeared.  So we’ve got four American girls with their backpacks and a huge suitcase full of random food standing in the middle of what we later found out to be the sketchiest neighborhood in Rome, and it was starting to rain and get dark.  Trying to stay as rational and calm as possible, we started making our way back to the bus station to figure something out.  On the way, some younger Italian guy says his only two English words, “Sexy, beautiful” to Ashley, and I was sure she was going to go off on him right then and there.  When we got back to the station we raced to the emergency hotel bookings counter to see if there was any hope to salvage our Roman holiday.  Luckily there was a three-star hotel nearby that had an opening all 7 nights, so we booked it.  Then we had to go file a police report because the hostel had already received a 50 euro down payment from us.  While sitting in the waiting room we met an American guy who works for GE that got his work laptop stolen.  Talking to him, I was reminded about how much I like American men…mainly because you don’t get a creeped out feeling like they just want a piece of action with you.  There was also this enraged old Italian man.  In his anger he was tossing and turning while laying on a bench, and he ended up completely falling off of the bench and flailing everywhere.  It was awesome to watch.  The police yelled at him to get out, and as he was leaving he turns to us and says, “I am a-sorry.  I am a-drunkee.”  Good luck with that one, dude.  When we finally got to our hotel it turned out we got the nicest room in the place, where we then stayed for the rest of the night just trying to comprehend the last 24 hours of our lives.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The four of us got up at 9 and went down for our free continental breakfast (cereal, croissants, hard-boiled eggs, juice, tiny cups of coffee).  We spent the morning going to the main branch of the national museum and to a crypt with the Rome Museum passes we bought.  It was lots of old sculptures, coins, bowls, mosaics, etc.  We then hopped a city bus to the Coliseum.  We had packed our own lunches and ate them in the park next to the Coliseum and stared at its enormity and people watched.  After lunch we went in and walked around inside and took some cool pics.  It’s crazy to be in such an old and historical place like that.  Then we went to the Roman Forum/Palentine Hill (lots of old ruins and freestanding columns where government buildings used to be), the Pantheon (general place of worship), and the Trevi Fountain.  We grabbed some gelato (sugary and soft Italian ice cream) and did some souvenir shopping, too.  A lot of the day was spent trying to configure a huge fold out map of the city and denying people who want to hand you flyers.  If you walk with a purpose and look like you know what you’re doing, they’ll usually leave you alone.  We ate dinner in our room from our stash of food because we were too tired and poor to go out to eat.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Another free breakfast, in which we stuffed our faces with the free food.  We then hopped their (old and poorly-planned) underground metro and went west of the city to the Vatican.  The first stop was St. Peter’s Basilica.  We were speaking Spanish to each other so as not to be easy American targets for “free English tours” and such.  There’s a prayer room in the basilica, and I prayed for all of the Youthworks kids I’m going to be coming into contact with this summer, that they will come to know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior and learn how to be humble servants of Christ and show his love to the people in the community in which they will be serving.  That was probably the coolest part.  Otherwise, it was just very big and ornate and flashy.  There were only two paintings of Jesus.  It was hard knowing how much money the Vatican has and that there are so many of their Catholic followers who are starving or suffering.  I’m pretty sure I’m simply way too Protestant to fully appreciate a place like that.  After that we went to the Sistine Chapel.  They led us all through an hour of boring other rooms before we got to the actual chapel with the famous ceiling and painting of God and man almost touching fingers.  Every inch of the walls and ceiling was painted.  It was a rectangular room and not super-huge, but I’m sure it seemed never-ending to Michelangelo!  The security guards kept yelling “silence” and “no photo”, so that sort of ruined the ambiance.  Later the four of us ate our lunch in the chapel’s courtyard, did some jewelry shopping J and got more gelato.  That night we discovered our new favorite hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant with the sweetest old man owner/waiter, Fernando.  I got some delish salmon alfredo, which I will have to copy the recipe for when I return to the States.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Grabbed breakfast and went to the neighborhood grocery store for milk and bread.  We decided to check out an old route called the Appian Way.  It’s basically a long street with very historic ruins, from gravesites to churches and houses of important people in Rome’s history.  On our way there, we came up out of our subway stop and found ourselves smack dab in the middle of the biggest manifestation/protest I’d ever seen.  Everyone was wearing red and had huge banners.  We finally figured out that it was anti-Fascism.  Very impressive.  We rented some bikes to go on the Appian Way (which we were taking off jumps and riding in the fields), and stopped to tour the ancient San Sebastiano catacombs.  They’re an intricate system on tunnels about four stories underground where they used to bury people to save on space.  The one we were in was from the first century and held about 100,000 people.  Again, very impressive.  After being impressed all day we were tired, so we went back to our hotel for a three-hour nap.  We ate dinner in our room, but later went out for drinks at a bar that only played Rihanna music.  Then we bought books in English at a bookstore to read during our afternoon siesta times.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

We got up early and took the bus to the southwest part of Rome, also known as the Trastaveri area, to check out their famous market.  It went as far as the eye could see, and we never did find the end to it.  People were selling jewelry, sunglasses, purses, clothes, leather and fur coats, underwear, kid’s toys, small electronics, kitchen supplies, etc.  Trisha and I were walking around together and almost walked right in the middle of a huge brawl.  It started with one African guy selling sunglasses in front of an Indian man’s sunglasses stand.  We stopped to watch what started out to be a verbal fight, but as more and more Africans and Indians got involved it started to get physical.  Guys were throwing punches, tackling each other, and I even saw an Indian man swinging around a long metal pipe.  The Indian man’s sunglasses tent ended up getting knocked down, so all those guys stopped to go help him set it up again quickly.  At one point in the fight I grabbed Trisha and we moved 10 feet back, right as two guys tackled each other to the ground where we had been standing.  It was intense.  After all that commotion we made our way to the Bocca Della Verita famous Mouth of Truth statue that was in Audrey Hepburn’s movie “Roman Holiday”.  Then we ate lunch in a nearby park and took a nap and read in the warm sun.  When we finally felt like getting up, we went and shopped more in the Trastaveri area, got two gelatos, saw Luke Gaffney’s twin whipping a palm branch around, and Trisha found a 50 euro bill on the ground.  Needless to say, she treated us to dinner that night at our favorite little restaurant with Fernando. 

At 3:30AM we were woken up by aftershocks of a 6.3 Richter scale earthquake about 90 km away in L’Aquila.  The aftershocks we felt were a 4.3-4.8 in Rome.  I’m a pretty heavy sleeper, but I was woken up to what I thought was my friend Trisha tossing and turning in the bed.  I asked her to stop moving, to which she replied, “I’m not.”  I lay there stone still but swaying back and forth and listening to the loud noise of the building creaking.  Kristi hollered from the other room, “What is that?!” and Trisha, trying to calm us down, said, “I think it’s just the wind.”  Ashley was wide awake in the corner, but too scared to even say anything.  We laid there for two or three minutes until I got lulled back to sleep again.  Apparently Kristi stayed awake for another two hours, feeling mini aftershocks about every 15 minutes. 

Monday, April 6, 2009

The next morning we woke up to emergency news coverage about some huge destructive earthquake the night before in a town about 45 minutes away and lots of cracks in the hotel room’s walls.  We spent a good portion of the morning glued to the Italian news and attempting to make out exactly what had happened.  That afternoon we went to the famous Spanish Steps and explored the ritzy shopping areas around it.  The street right in front of the steps is absolutely mind-boggling: Jimmy Choo, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, Guess, Valentino.  You name it, it was there.  The inner fashionista was going crazy and wondering why my bank account didn’t have a few extra zeroes at the end.  J  We did end up going to H&M and I got some cute navy shorts and a blue flowered sundress, so the day wasn’t a complete shopping waste.  Later we went to their version of Central Park in northern Rome to eat our lunch, sit, and read for a few hours.  Around 6 or 7 we went and got our favorite gelato of the trip at a place called Alice’s (right down the street from the Spanish steps for future reference).  Then we went to the grocery store to stock up on some basics.  We spent the night doing cucumber mask peels and playing cards.  

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Today we decided to revisit all our favorite places in Rome.  We walked back to the Trevi Fountain to do the famous “make a wish and toss a coin over your shoulder” tradition.  We were hanging around taking pictures and thought this one man looked suspicious.  I saw he was hiding something up his sleeve.  He was looking pretty hard at the coins in the water, and then before we knew it he was leaning over the edge with a long metal TV antennae with a magnet on the end fishing out the one euro coins!  The grungy old man was stealing wishes!  He saw that we saw and started to follow us, and we bolted so fast, winding through the crowd just to lose him.  Rome was actually full of homeless people begging during the day and sleeping in sleeping bags and on top of cardboard during the night.  We learned pretty quickly where they were so we could avoid them.  We continued down the street shopping for souvenirs, clothes, and got some gelato.  Then we went to the park overlooking the Coliseum to eat lunch, talk, and do a mini photo shoot.  (Trisha’s dad is a professional photographer and Ashley has a super-nice camera.)  We went to a Murano colored glass store near our hotel later that afternoon and ended up talking (in English) to a cool old Italian lady who spoke 7 and a half languages (learning Russian) and who knew all about Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, and old American music.  She was hilarious; it was great.  Later, as we were getting ready to go to the ballet, we felt another strong aftershock that was moving the doors and chandeliers.  When we got to the Opera house to watch the ballet we saw there was a notice posted on the door that the light technicians and other workers had gone on strike and that the show was cancelled!  We try to do cultured things, but life just won’t let us!  On the way home we stopped by our favorite Italian restaurant to get a picture with the cute old man, Fernando, and he insisted we stay for awhile and gave us free breadsticks.  Our favorite Italians are all the older ones.   Now read the Sevilla, Spain blog for the continuation of our trip!

Recognize this!

Roman Forum

Our BFF Fernando

Anti-fascist friends

To keep you up to date, we just got back from a long weekend in Paris.  I´ll be here in Spain for less than 24 hours (just enough time to unpack, shower, go to class, blog to you lovelies, and then pack again) and then tomorrow we leave to go on Spring Break to Rome and Florence, Italy for a week, and then we´ll fly directly to Sevilla, Spain for another 5 days.  It´s going to be a whirlwind two weeks!

So Paris.was.incredible.  Last Friday (the 27th), 13 of us UNI kids hopped on a charter bus for the 17-hour ride along the scenic northern coast of Spain and through the heart of France.  We arrived in Paris on Saturday morning at 7AM and were immediately shoved into speaking French and solving problems with the Metro being shut down.  (So a word of thanks to Mrs. Lund my 7th grade French teacher for the life skills.)   When we finally arrived to our hotel we were a little let down that it wasn´t a hostel (which usually give you free range of a kitchen) because our host moms had packed a bunch of food for us that required some sort of stovetop with boiling water.

Luckily it was still early in the day, so we quickly changed our clothes and nine of us set out to see the sites (the others were going on a bike tour).  First we went into the Notre Dame Cathedral.  It was waay cool because in our art classes in Oviedo we had been learning all about the Gothic style of architecture, and the Notre Dame is a perfect example of many of those characteristics.  It was great to be able to look at something so old and understand and appreciate it with an educated mind.  After that we hopped on a boat taxi and rode down the Seine river to the Eiffel Tower.  All of us wanted to go to the very top, so we braved the cold and wind while waiting in line for the elevator for 45 minutes.  (I made sure we were NOT accidentally in the stairs line like what happened last July!!!)  The views from the tower did not dissapoint.  You can really see the whole romantic city, and it´s pretty breathtaking.  As we were going down, we stopped on the middle lookout deck and ¡saw the most gorgeous double rainbow! Rainbows and the Eiffel Tower..doesn´t get much better than that.  When we got down we hopped on the boat taxi again and rode it to the famous Louvre museum.  I think my favorite part about the Louvre is walking up to it.  There are these massive gardens with gravel pathways and an arc you walk under to get to the point where you are almost being hugged by the long arms of the 4-story museum.  The glass pyramids that serve as the entrances and skylights to the lobby definitely do seem to stick out in an architectural sense, but since they´ve been there for 20 years now, they´re just another part of the grandeur.  Of course we saw the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Glory.  We also spent some time in the Spanish art section, since most of us are studying that.  By the time we left it was almost sunset, so we walked out the front doors of the Louvre and then followed that street, which turns into the glamorous Champs d´Elsees boulevard–Paris´version of a 5th Avenue.  The huge Louis Vuitton anchor store was probably the biggest highlight for me.  That and the huge Cartier (jewelry) store.  At the very end of the Champs d´Elsees is the Arc de Triomphe.  You can actually see the arc from the time you walk out the doors of the Louvre.  We all had museum passes, so we walked an insane amount of stairs to get to the very top of the arc and watch the sunset (the Eiffel Tower is super-close, too).  From there a bunch of my friends had to get back and freshen up to go to a show at the Moulin Rouge later that night.  Since we had already seen a show in London, we thought we´d skip out on that one.  (They all had a great time though.)  The rest of us walked around the city for a bit longer and then made our way back to the hotel where we sweet-talked the guy at the reception desk to let us use the kitchen   ¿Who can say no to these perfect American smiles?

On Sunday morning the same group of nine of us set out for yet another big Parisian day.  We hit up the best farmer´s market I´ve ever been to (Aunt Carol eat your heart out).  It was rows and rows of fresh produce, French bread, French cheese, and handmade jewelry (I bartered down a uniquely cool ring for one euro).  I also got to use some of my limited French vocabulary:  (taking a free sample of cheese) Bonjour.  ¿Est fromage? ¡Merci!  Other than that, communication was ¿Parlaiz vous anglais?, a lot of strange grunting noises, and pointing   After that we used our museum pass to climb more spiral staircases up the towers of the Notre Dame for our third insanely high view of the city.  They´ve got some scary-looking gargoyles up there.  We also channeled Quasi Moto and went up into the belltower to see just how huge the bell is.  When we got down we hopped the Metro to go out to the Palace of Versailles.  (Let it be made clear that yours truly was NOT navigating at this point in the journey.)  We ended up riding the Metro for two hours going waaay north of the city into the suburbs.  The funniest part was that no one seemed to mind too much that we were lost, and it ended up being a really fun bonding time talking and playing word games.  By the time we got back into the recognizable city we tried going to the Musee d´Orsay (contemporary art) and the Musee de L´Orangerie, but both were closing and not allowing any more visitors.  So we chilled out in a cute garden and ate chocolate and banana crepes from a street vendor.  Then we hopped the Metro again out to the famous Sacre Couer to watch the sunset over the city from the front steps.  This was our fourth time catching a view from the top of the city, but probably the coolest because it was all 13 of us, a bunch of locals, and a band playing songs from U2, Dave Matthews, Beatles, etc. and taking requests.  It was quite a sight…and a memory.  Once the sun had set we could see the twinking lights from the Eiffel Tower (it glows all night but twinkles at the top of every hour for five minutes).  We decided we wanted to see the twinklers up close, so eight of us took the Metro all the way down to the tower to see it at the top of the next hour.  He had to hurry though, and there were times when we were sprinting through the underground tunnels and laughing our heads off just trying to get there.  When we ran up the stairs and rounded the corner, it was there in all its twinkling glory.  ¡We barely made it!  It was so much prettier up close.  5000 pictures later we started strolling along the Seine river, enjoying the cool Parisian evening and each others´company.  We watched the twinklers for the third consecutive time from a very famous bridge, and then finally headed back.

Monday morning six of us started out by going to see Jim Morrison´s grave.  I´m not a huge Doors fan, but they are, so it was a pretty big deal.  After that we went to the neighborhood of the Moulin Rouge to the Musee du L´Erotique.  I think you can figure out what that was all about.  From there we took the Metro back to the Notre Dame/Seine River area to buy some art that vendors/artists sell from their little stands along the river.  By this time I had definitely mastered the Paris Metro system and was leading all of my friends around.  I probably still wouldn´t be able to do calculus to save my life, but I´ll let you decide the more valuable life skill.

That afternoon all of us had a late lunch and enjoyed the sunny day on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower.  A group of us took cat naps in the warm sun and woke up to this iconic image right above us.  I couldn´t have asked for a better way to end our Parisian adventure.

So many things to see, so little time!  Let’s just say next time I go to London I’m definitely bringing more than one pair of shoes (even if they were super-fab black boots).  I think the next paragraph is overwhelming and jam-packed with lots of places and information, but in a way it’s the best way I can relate to you the feeling of the whole weekend.  Here goes:

Riding the London Eye massive ferris wheel.  Big Ben.  Houses of Parliament.  Hostel has bunk beds three-high. Call Manuel, get on to his VIP list and in to Club Punk in SoHo for free.  Crazy house and techno music.  London ‘trust fund’ party scene.  Changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.  British accents.  Portabello Road, Knotting Hill shopping.  Starbucks.  Four hour bike tour.  Cute Texan guide.  Gardens, palaces, perfectly blooming flowers on trees, monuments, Abbeys, Princess Diana monument, gangs of rollerbladers.  National Art Gallery for free.  ‘La Clique’ sexy circus show at the Hippodrome.  Platform 9 ¾ from Harry Potter.  Microwave meals are exciting.  Fall asleep with clothes and lights on.  The Beatles’ Abbey Road street crossing.  Getting back to airport: first bus passed by without explanation, second was late.  Extreme worry.  Cutting it too close.  Sprinting through the airport with blisters.  Everything working out fine.  Wake up in London, go to sleep in Spain.

London Eye

I woke up and thought I’d break the monotony by going shopping and having a little “me” time.  Being around other students and then a family of four all the time can get a little exhausting.  So I got all cute and walked down Calle Uria (Oviedo’s posh shopping avenue).  I went into all the stores I had seen before and had promised myself to one day come back to.  For example, Zara, Sfera, Pull&Bear, Pimkie, Corte Ingles, H&M, Stradivarius, Mango, etc.  I ended up getting some cute skinny jeans at Zara for 20 euro, and a cool swirly white jewelry set from a hole-in-the-wall shop for about 30 euro.  Luckily I treated myself, because later on that night I got my wallet, camera, and cell phone stolen.  I realized that stuff was gone when I was quickly grabbing my purse to get out of this club on Calle Mon where I was talking to this Spanish guy and the third word out of his mouth was “follar” (translation: to screw, have sex with).  All of my friends and I were just super-frustrated with the situation about the pressure to meet Spanish people when they’re all creeps, and then getting your stuff stolen on top of all the other madness.  (The only good thing is that we filed a police report and the next week the wallet with the cards, no money, was found.) 

Saturday, March 14, about 10 of us girls met in the morning and caught the train to the coastal town of Gijon to catch some beach action.  It was a little chilly, but nonetheless nice to chill with my friends on the beach on my 20^th birthday.  Being able to lay on the sand in relaxation or giggling with my friends without having to worry about a job, a house, a mortgage, a boyfriend, a husband, children, or anything stressful in life is a great feeling that I’m taking advantage of because I know it won’t last for very much longer. 

I went home later that afternoon and took a nap.  (All that relaxing on the beach really wears a girl out    Then I got up and got ready for my joint birthday party with my host mom.  Her birthday is on March 22, so awhile ago we decided to do a two-for-one and invite some of my friends and all of her sisters and friends out for a typical crazy Spanish all-night party.  At 10PM we went out to dinner at the Italian restaurant that Monica’s sister, Ines, and her husband-in-law, Mike, manage.  At any given time there were 6-9 of us around the table just having a good time (some of them were on the clock at the restaurant).  The Spanish ladies made it a rule we weren’t allowed to speak in English at all that night, which was just fine because we’re at that level with our skills.  It’s definitely easier to listen, though, than actually form a sentence in your head and spit it out with the accent and all.  Still, doable.  After that we went to the infamous corner bar, La Tina.  The ladies walked in and knew absolutely everyone in the packed bar.  I knew a few people, too, and sat down next to a couple and just started chatting away like it was English.  We were there for quite awhile, but afterwards seven of us went up the road to a newer place.  Finally at about 3 AM we made our way to the Karaoke bar.  Again, these ladies knew quite a few people, some of who had been at La Tina earlier.  Mind you, these are 30-40-50-something Spanish adults.  They’re pretty much pros at the whole all-nighter thing.  The karaoke place was pretty fun, and of course they made the three American girls sing Britney Spears’ “One More Time”, lol.  Overall it was a seriously good time that ended at 6 AM when everything finally shut down.

  I have yet to hear about any other American student partying it up with their host moms.

jump

Our journey began on Friday night when we caught the late-night bus to Madrid.  While in Madrid we rode the subway, but in the middle of our journey to the airport the metro shut down for the night.  So we walked up the stairs to the street and caught a bus that said it was going to the airport.  Well, again halfway through that journey the bus driver stops in the middle of Madrid and tells us that´s his last stop.  We have absolutely no clue where we are, and it´s 2:30 in the morning.  Luckily two girls from Chile were also trying to get to the airport.  The bus driver told us that we could walk to the airport and that it was only 20 minutes away.  Ok, fine, we´ll just walk.  On the way we saw a hotel shuttle bus going to the airport and asked if we could have a ride.  Of course, no, and then to top it off the guy tells us that it´s impossible to walk to the airport because there´s only a highway that leads there.  What?! Impossible?! This is when freak-out mode started to kick in.  One of the Chilean girls begged him to at least give us the phone number for a taxi, to which he obliged.  Two seconds later we hopped into a random taxi that just so happened to pull up, but had to smile pretty and bat our eyelashes in order for him to let five people in (four is the max).  When we finally got to the airport it was super late and we all ended up sleeping curled up on the hard marble floor.  Escapades like that happen all the time when you´re a poor college kid trying to travel on the cheap.

So two buses, a metro, a taxi, and an airplane ride later, we arrived in Valencia at 8am on Saturday morning.

We came up out of the metro station into the center of the city.  All of the buildings were cream-colored and surrounded by tall palm trees.  Since it was the beginning of the Las Fallas celebration (which I’ll explain more about later), there were tons of fried food stands on the sidewalks selling churros with melted chocolate to dip them in.  We walked past their famous bullfighting ring and on to a large avenue with their auditorium, art museum, science museum, and seven-habitat aquarium called the Oceanografic.  The Oceanografic looked the most interesting, so we bought tickets for about 20 euro, locked up our backpacks (the only luggage we had with us for the weekend), and started exploring.  There were lots of groups of senior citizen Spaniards, and that was almost as interesting to witness.  They were all pretty dressed up, wearing shoes that would have been giving me blisters after 5 minutes, and either had blue or maroon hair.  Classic.  The habitats were cool, too.  They had things like Mediterranean (especially cool since we were right there), Atlantic, Antarctic, Tropical, a bird habitat, bunches of those tunnel aquariums you can walk through, and a dolphin performance arena. 

We were getting pretty warm by this point and couldn’t help but want to sprint to the beach.  Too bad it wasn’t that easy…probably a two-mile walk.  (I think we made it way more complicated than it should have been.)  But por fin, finally, we made it to this massive white sandy beach and ran right into the water.  It was classic Baywatch, just without the perfectly bronzed skin (which we were hoping would miraculously come to us later in the day).  It was my friend Ashley’s first time actually being in an ocean/sea (this was the Mediterranean), which is kind of mind-boggling for me.  We all had a relaxing afternoon laying on the beach without a care in the world.

After awhile we reluctantly packed up and headed to try and find our hostel.  This process always involves some sort of mass transit, map use, and confusion.  But somehow we make it work.  I thought I would channel my high school fashion days and wear a bright green Ireland track jacket, short black shorts, high white socks, retro Asics, and Barbie-pink backpack through the downtown of the city.  Apparently I was getting some crazy looks by all sorts of people.  They should just lighten up  

After we got all checked in and cleaned up at the hostel we sought out a good restaurant to eat Valencia’s world-famous paella (they invented this famous Spanish dish of rice, veggies, and either chicken, rabbit, shrimp, or other seafood).  The guy at our hostel recommended this adorable outdoor paella place, and we ordered a massive dish of rabbit and chicken paella.  It was enough for each of us to have two platefuls!  All throughout dinner the neighborhood kids were running around doing firecrackers for Las Fallas.  Loco-ness.

At 10 PM the Las Fallas kick-off parade started.  Las Fallas is a tradition in Valencia where groups of people build these 15-meter paper mache sculptures that represent anything from Spanish folklore to current events.  This year there was something like 300 of them.  One sculpture is chosen as the winner and is put into a museum, but then the rest are cut open, stuffed with fireworks, and simultaneously set ablaze at midnight (this madness happened the weekend after we were there).  It’s a city of pyromaniacs, for sure.  The parade was normal at first, but then it got really political and weird.  It didn’t help that in that region of Spain they speak their ancient language of Catalan and that all of the protest signs were in Catalan.  We think it was mostly about healthcare system problems and the economic crisis, “la crisis”, which they talk about a lot more openly here. 

Sunday we got up, checked out, grabbed a Starbucks (which are non-existent in Asturias), and went to their market.  I bought a cute purple paisley tunic and other souvenirs.  (I’m a sucker for post cards and magnets.)  Then we found a huge park in the middle of the city and laid down to basque in the sun a little bit longer.  Around noon we had to get ourselves back to the airport to fly to Madrid.

We had a couple of hours to kill in Madrid, and luckily I remembered my way around from four years ago.  I led the girls to the Puerta del Sol (their version of Times Square).  Then we walked to the Plaza Mayor, the social center of the city.  There were thousands of people there eating at outside cafes, shopping, watching street performers, etc.  I randomly talked to this old Spanish man for like 20 minutes about a bunch of stuff (all in Spanish, too, sweet).  I pretty much got his life story (like usual with me, huh?).  It’s amazing how lonely some people are…and very sad, too.  We also got absolutely begged to by this guy in English in the bus station, but we just knew we couldn’t and shouldn’t give him any money and hurried away.  The Midwesterners in us felt a little bad for that, but such is life.

Beach!

Paella

Saturday morning we got up at 6am, took a bus to Madrid, and then flew to Dublin.  Luckily, all the travel went pretty seamless.  We arrived around 7pm, found our way to our award-winning youth hostel, and explored the renouned Temple Bar area of the city.

On Sunday we went on a tour of the Irish countryside.  How beautiful!!  We went pretty far out of the city in a 15-passenger van with a tour guide and stopped at 5 important sites.  The guide was very knowledgeable about Celtic legends and Irish history, and it was really cool to learn about all of their myths.  I never knew a whole lot about Celtic culture and how they mixed it with Catholocism, but it’s quite interesting.  Apparently the Celts had hundreds of gods (of the sun, ocean, earth, etc.) that they had to continually please.  The Celts were very war-like people, so when the missionaries came, they explained that the rest of the earth believed in the most powerful God, Jesus, and that Jesus had come to Ireland, fought, and defeated their most powerful Celtic gods, so he was now the new ruler.  This made sense to them because they were used to tribal leaders at war with each other and accepted it pretty openly.  The Celtic cross looks different because it has the circle (the sun god) with the cross on top (Jesus defeated the sun god).  We visited a 5000 year old (!) Celtic grave, a bunch of ruins, and the hill where St. Patrick had his big fire as a publicity stunt to one-up the Irish king.  For lunch we went to a small town restaurant with a hot Sunday buffet, and it reminded me soo much of America!  Roast beef, home-made mashed potatoes, veggies, Diet Coke… I was thinking about how much dad would like it the whole time!  It was very similar to a Turnberries or Machine Shed, and I was lovin it.  Actually, the whole country is very similar to America.  I can definitely see now how much the Irish have influenced our American culture.  Very cool.

After our tour we grabbed some food from a grocery store and made it in the big kitchen at the hostel with all the other poor college kids.  lol.  At 9 we went to a stand-up comedy act.  We were the only Americans, so it was nice to do something not so touristy.

On Monday morning we toured the Guinness factory.  It was interesting to see why they make it so dark, what the deal is with the Toucan in their advertisements, and why they started the Guinness Book of World Records.  My fav is that Arthur Guinness was so confident in his product that when he signed the lease for the building 250 years ago, it was for 9000 years!  Well, here’s to 8750 more!

5000-yr-old tomb

Graveyard

So this weekend to celebrate some of the days of Carnaval, our program coordinators, Luna and Paula, organized a big trip up into the nearby mountains, the Picos de Europa.  About 15 UNI kids and 15 Europeans left on Saturday and drove about an hour south of Oviedo to our hostel.  We took a long nap on a grassy hillside in the warm sun that afternoon.  Around 4 we took off on a scenic hike around the area.  The Europeans were complaining the whole time because it was so muddy, but none of us Iowan kids complained one word.  We hiked through tiny little pueblos and through the forest, up and down the mountain.  When we got back to the hostel that we had completely rented out, everyone got showered and ready for dinner and the 80s party.  Everyone had a big family-style dinner together, and we celebrated four people’s birthdays (Ashley included).  After dinner we went into the bar area and cranked the 80s tunes.  I have a wide variety of music on my iPod, including quite a few 80s songs, so I started playing those through the stereo.  Some of the other girls brought out their iPods, and some Spanish guys had burned some 80s mix CDs, and somehow I fell into the role of disc jockey for the evening.  It was actually pretty fun, especially since I enjoy dances and music so much.  Everyone had a great time being dressed up, dancing, and practicing Spanish and English. 

Sunday we got up around noon, grabbed some breakfast, and went to some lookout areas in the mountains.  Then we stopped in a random little town for a couple of hours to eat lunch and headed back to Oviedo.  Carnaval continues into this week, so Monday night is the big parade and party in Gijon.

  It should be fun!

Buena Vista