Tapas, Flamenco, and Muslims

This past weekend I had a trip to Granada, which means pomegranate in Spanish for all of you itching to know that fun fact. I went into the trip not knowing what to expect but I left saying it was one of the best weekends I have had here. Even though I have only had five weekends here they have all been awesome so it does still means something, I would strongly recommend Granada or at least one of the major Andalus cities for anyone traveling in Spain.

Unfortunately from Valencia, Granada is an 8 hour bus ride away but it was sped up because someone brought all of the Harry Potters so we would have something to do. Once we got there we went straight to the hotel and then to tapas bars for dinner. Granada is famous for their tapas so we ate as many kinds of tapas as we could. All you have to do is sit down and order a drink whether it is alcoholic, carbonated or just water they will bring you a tapa regardless, it's awesome. That night we went to three different tapas bars, we coined the term "pop tapa hoppin" meaning when you go from bar to bar ordering different tapas. It will catch on soon, I promise.

After pop tapa hoppin we went to a view of La Alhambra at night which is a famous Muslim palace in Granada. It was a breath-taking view, and the live flamenco music in the background made it all the more jaw-dropping. I could have stayed there for hours but we only had 5 minutes, VERY sad. 

After seeing the view of La Alhambra at night we went to a flamenco dance. I had no idea what to expect going in so I was surprised when they sat us in such a skinny room. The flamenco music is really cool, I can't even imagine how hard it is to play the guitar the way they do, and the singing is very unique, I am not able to put words to it. I would suggest listening to it sometime if you aren't familiar with it. The flamenco dance is also incredible. They make such strong movements and stomp so hard it could break your foot, that's why I was so nervous sitting so close to the stage! I had no idea there would be so much footwork. I have no idea how they do it. On a side note, the royal family and Michelle Obama have been to this restaurant to watch the flamenco dancers, pretty cool!

The next stop on our trip was a tour of La Alhambra. Inside the palace are beautiful gardens, very fancy fountains, and intricate moldings on the walls. It was very interesting to hear all of the history, it is so complicated because of the Spanish Inquisition. We had our own tour guide which was nice so we could ask as many questions as we want, and yes, it was in Spanish. It was a lot of fun to walk around inside the palace even though it was scorching hot, I don't know how they can take it!

After La Alhambra we finished the night off with more pop tapa hopping, which is always a great time. The next morning we quick toured the Albaycín. This is the Muslim neighborhood in Granada. I am told resembles Morocco more than Spain, I have yet to go to Morocco so I can not speak on this except for the fact that it certainly didn't look Spanish. We also got a little lesson on the Muslim culture in Granada which was interesting especially since before coming to Granada I had no idea it had such an prominent Muslim culture. I guess I should start doing some research before I go to these places. Granada was an awesome experience and I am very glad I got to see the culture from the south of Spain, its definitely different from Valencia.

Hasta Luego!

Viva Madrid

Two weekends ago I went to Madrid, I absolutely loved the city. It is about a two hour bus ride from Valencia. On the way there we watched the movie Disturbia, not like this is important at all but I found it hilarious how much we all got into it. By the end everyone was on the edge of their seats. On the way back we watched Deja Vu which completely screws with your mind. Both are fun watches if you are into that kind of movie or are in a large group of dramatic people.

Anyways, when we arrived in Madrid we went straight to the Placio Real, the Royal Palace. The royal family no longer lives there so now it is just open to tourists or used when the king is having a party with important people. It is a giant building with a very nice plaza in the middle and a spectacular view.

Outside of the Royal Palace

                                    

Royal Palace

Inside the Plaza, Madrid group (minus a few)

 The inside of the Palace, as you would expect, is beyond ornate. They were quite strict inside the palace, we had to be quiet and we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the palace. We only got shushed a couple of times, I am learning that the stereotype that Americans are super loud is holding up, especially in a group of 30 college students. As for the pictures, I just took some from the internet so you guys could see. However, we were able to see all of this just the way it appears below.

Dinning room, there were four cups for each person, that is a lot of fluids

The throne room

All of the print on the wall is actually embroidered on the wall, incredible

After the palace we had free time for the rest of the day the first plan of action was to go and eat. We got Doner Kebap, this is a very popular kind restaurant all over the big cities. It makes delicious and cheap Turkish (or what I believe to be Turkish) food. This is a common spot for a lot of the people in my group, especially since there is one right around the corner from our school. We were all extremely hungry and all of the women were getting very cranky so Doner hit the spot. After we went back to the hotel, which was very nice, and took a nap as well as a very nice shower.

We took it easy Friday night because we had a very early morning so we just went to a tapas bar called El Tigre, where they gave us massive cups of cerveza and would not stop bringing us plates heaping with food. Especially the deep fried cheese balls, I ate waaayyy to many of those.

Us at El Tigre

On Saturday we woke up early and took a bus tour of the city, we saw the bull fighting arena, Real Madrid's stadium and a lot more. After we went to the Prado Museum, its the third most important art museum in Europe. We only had 2 hours in the museum although you could spend a whole day in there and not see it all. We had time to see all of the main pieces in the museum, it was all very impressive.

Museo del Prado

Bull fighting arena

We had free time from 1:30 pm on... they give us a lot of free time. The group I went with decided to just walk around the main plazas. The weather wasn't very nice the weekend we were there. It rained a little bit and was quite chilly. We went to the largest Corte Ingles in Spain, Corte Ingles is just a Spanish department store, and it was enormous, I would even say it was bigger than the main department stores in Chicago. We got lunch at the mercado (if you don't know what that word means ask my Mom), I got a bunch of different one euro seafood tapas, they were very tasty. Other people ate stuffed olives. Olives are hugely popular here, but don't worry Grandma you can pick them off and the food is still just as good, I would agree with you and way better without the olives. And this reminds me in two weeks I'm going to Morocco! I can't wait!

Market

Once again, when dinner came we were all starving, our chaperones brought us to Tony Roma's which I think is very funny. It was nice to have some American food though. At night we went to La Kapital, one of the most popular discotecas in Europe, and for very good reason. It was awesome. Its seven stories tall and each floor has a different theme such as the Salsa floor, or Rap floor. Also every 20 or 30 mins when there is a good point in the music, they would shoot cold fog down from the ceiling onto the main floor. Also on a side note, I was in the bathroom when someone recognized me, and he came up to me and the following is still blowing my mind. We were camp friends at Wooden Acres ten years ago and we lived in the same bunk. He was on a Study abroad in Madrid from "The U" (University of Miami) I couldn't believe that a camp friend from ten years ago was in the same city, in the same club, in the same bathroom all at the same time, I still can't believe it!

View from one of the floors onto the main dance floor with the legendary fog

 The next day we went to the Reina Sofia Museum, a museum for contemporary art. I did not understand the majority of the art since most of it was... well... contemporary. Although I did enjoy the art piece that was just an entire room painted yellow. Also some of Picasso's paintings were there and that was very cool to see even though I had no real idea what I was looking at. After the Reina Sophia, we had more free time. We were all pretty tired from the prior night so we relaxed at the royal gardens, and I am so glad we did that. It was a lot of fun to just sit on the steps and watch all of the boaters and also just to walk around and check out all of the very impressive gardening i.e the flowers, statues, and tree art (although I don't think there tree trimming skill come even close to us maintenance men at Wellington Estates).

Me in the yellow room

Royal Garden

Royal Garden

Royal Garden

I had a great time in Madrid and it only made me love Spain even more! It has a more of a big city feel then Valencia, which isn't really a surprise, and there is so much to do there! I would have loved a couple more days, but don't worry I have large intentions to make it back one day!

Famous statue selfie

Slowly becoming Valenciano, The Sequel

(6/01- 6/02) Last Sunday I had one of the most Valencian days I think one could ever have. But before I get the that I have to talk about my trip to Peñiscola.

Peñiscola is a beautiful city with an awesome beach with a great view of a castle! The castle is very old and important. If you are curious, Google will be more helpful because I don't really remember the significance of it. Something to do with a pope and the Knights Templar. We were allowed to go in the castle which was very cool even though I didn't know anything about it. Just massive stone rooms with medieval decorations. I felt like a knight for the hour I was in it! It was excellent weather however since the sun is so hot in Spain the sand becomes unbearable, we tried to play soccer and I ended up burning the bottom of my foot from just walking on the sand! Minus the flaming feet it was a really fun excursion!

On Sunday my Madre woke Sam and I up at 10 am (way too early!!) to head out for our eventful day. If you remember, I mentioned earlier that I was going to meet up with all of my host moms friends again at their huerta (this is a garden with food instead of plants and flowers... its in Spanish of course), this is where I'm going. We had to load up the car with all of the stuff for the paella and then met her friends at the huerta. It was not what I was expecting. The huerta was in a huge plot of land where people can rent out space for their own huerta, like a storage unit... but for a garden, it was very cool. It was right outside of the city, you could get a cool view of the skyline from where we were.

In Spain the men are the people that normally make the paella so we set up the paella stuff and then Sam and I went to work. Good thing we had that cooking class first, I feel like a paella expert now. We all sat around talking and snacking as we were making the paella. There were 8 of us in total so there was plenty to talk about. My Madre forgot to bring the rice so we had a little extra snacking and talking time while one of their friends went to pick some up.

The paella turned out excellent (not like I was doubting myself or anything). I found it surprising that it is normal to just eat straight from the paella (they also call the pan used to make paella a paella... seems silly). It was a great start to my Sunday but only half of my Valencian day.

I got back and was really looking forward to a nap, however I checked my group chat and everyone was going to some really important parade in the center, I decided I had to go. The parade went about way over my head, my knowledge in catholic teaching really failed me this day. Later in school I was told that this parade was over 600 years old and was used back in the day as a way to teach the bible to the less educated citizens. One example is La Moma. La Moma is a man dressed in an all white dress so he looks like a women. He represents virtue and does some dance with these other men dressed in red, who represent sin. Eventually at the end of the dance virtue wins and sin falls. I wasn't able to pick that up after seeing it without some background knowledge. It was a weekend full of experiencing different cultures, and was very successful!

View from the Castle in Peñíscola

View from the Castle in Peñíscola

View from the Castle in Peñíscola

Inside the Castle

View from the Castle in Peñíscola

Inside the Castle

Inside the Castle

Candela and I

Sam, Madre and I

Sam, Madre and I being models, I'm the only one who really went for it, nailed it

At the huerta

At the huerta

All of my new friends

At the huerta

flower art at the parade

Huge guy... he is fake

La Moma dance

La Moma dance

La Moma

Extremely eventful classes

The title of this post was just an attention grabber so everyone would want to read this post, in reality it is quite misleading, so I hope it doesn't bore you, but you have already started reading so you can't stop now!

Now that everyone has settled in and is used to being in Valencia, my life has slowed down a bit. Classes are good, none of them are too difficult. In my conversation class we just converse about random things, I have no idea how we are going to have a midterm in that class next week since we have learned less material than I learn in the first day of a math class. My other two classes are a little easier to follow the structure. They are both a lot of reading and writing, I have already had four papers due and read a couple of stories that went way over my head. I wouldn't say anything is too difficult but motivating yourself to do the homework here is quite the task for all of us. However we are very lucky that we have an excellent teaching staff, which makes it much easier to understand the two century old Spanish literature that we are currently reading.

I still do have my fair share of free time, sometimes we will go to the beach or río and hang out, other times I babble non-stop at my host-mom. We have had some very in-depth conversations using  some very simple words, it can get frustrating sometimes not being able to clearly express what you want to say. The rest of the down time I have (which is still a lot) I lay in my bed and watch shows and YouTube videos or play solitaire. I could probably beat a solitaire game on my phone with my eyes closed.

The food has been excellent since I have been here, I only have one complaint. They cook with a ridiculous amount of oil, yesterday I went to play basketball and there is a dangerous chance that I was sweating pure oil, I was shimmering more that I usually do, although that could just be from my bronze bod carved by the Valencian sun... its probably a mix of the two. Only twice have I sneakily thrown my food out to avoid eating it. Both times were because our Madre left early and just left the food sitting in a pool of oil, I just couldn't do it.

I had a cooking class after school last Thursday that was an absolute blast! We made two paellas and a traditional Valenciana drink called Horchata. It is a drink made from tiger nuts, sugar, water and maybe milk (I can't remember), it was delicious and very sweet! The paellas were a squid paella and a chicken paella. My job was to clean the squids. This consisted of pulling out the heart, cutting off the tentacles, removing the spine, ripping out the insides, and then peeling the skin off... in that order. It was very gooey and fun, however my hands smelled like squid for the next ten hours no matter how many times I washed them, that part wasn't fun.

I am enjoying the calmer week days, we normally have one excursion a week. Tomorrow we are headed to the aquarium! I am loving my trip more and more everyday, and the people here are great!   

Our teacher

Cooking the chicken paella

My excellently cut squids being fried

Finished squid paella, its black because of the copious amounts of squid ink we added

Both finished paellas

Finished chicken paella

My plate of food, Yum!

Sam, our chef, and myself