Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Que Sera Sera....
Yes, I finally got it. I went to a VERY clean and extremely awesome tatoo parlor today and got my spanish tat. Absolutely worth it! It says "Que Sera Sera" translation..."what will be will be" I love it. It's on my left foot in small cursive writing and I got it in a cool rusty brown color. It kind of looks like henna, but I can't tell really at the moment, it's still red and raised. P.S. the foot killed. For 15 minutes I made the wierdest conversation of my life with Niki and the girl doing the tatoo. Hilarious, but painful, but worth it.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
So Much!
Oh man, so much to say!!
Ok, well first thing is first; Kendra came to visit me! Kendra and Maddie came about a week ago and we did some solid hang out time. Despite us going sight seeing and going to the beach, it was rather relaxing. I'm not overly sure if it was chill because I was with Kendra, or if it really was a pretty laid back weekend, none the less, we had a great time together. In about 2 weeks, we'll be back together for the spring break of our lives. I can't wait!!!!!!!!
On Saint Patrick's Day the group set out on our 3rd trip of the semester to Valencia and Barcelona. 6 hours later on the bus we were in Cullera, which is in Valencia and chilled out in our awesome apartments. I got to cook dinner. I made pasta (obviously, cheap and easy) and my own sauce!!! so satisfying! I really miss cooking, I almost cried when I thought the stove wouldn't work, but then we figured it out so all was well. The next day we went into town and participated in some festivities in the town and basically danced in the streets with the whole entire town. Thursday we went into Valencia, the city, and saw Las Fallas. Basically the 4th of July on crack. We went to this parade at around 8pm and it was just a half an hour of people dressed as devils and carrying flares and fireworks in their hands and setting them off. It was truly ridiculously amazing. Also, because it is just a HUGE botellon in the streets (a big out door party in the streets) we started our drinking at lunch, my drink of choice was my malibu/sunny d mix. delicious.
Las Fallas: HUGE paper machete sculptures painted with such detail that you think they are made of stone. The paper looks so smooth and hard, but its so light and papery, it's so bizarre. They were around 4 stories tall, easily. There were smaller ones that were maybe 6 or 7 ft tall, but the tallest were 4-6 stories tall. They were located ALL over the city, probably one or two per plaza...if you've ever been to spain you'd know the there is a plaza every 5 ft here. You pick one or two that are close that you want to see burn and chill out in a huge crowd of people singing and chanting "FUEGO" until the firworks technicians are ready to blow it up. We waited around 45 min for the one that we saw. then all of the sudden its this huge firworks display that is set off about 7ft in front of you and is right over your head and there is extreme worry about buildings burning down due to their proximity to the fire. Then in about 5 seconds the 4 story tall paper machete statue BURNS DOWN in the biggest bon fire you've ever been to. It's amazing. Probably MORE amazing is the amount of people in the streets setting off firecrackers EVERYWHERE. All ages, like kids 4 and up all the way to old people just lighting firecrackers in the streets where people are walking. Frightening.....I joined in a couple of times, but I'm no pyro.
Barcelona was BEAUTIFUL! I tried to get to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see if Uncle George still had some art there, but no dice, it closed before I got there. I really liked that city a lot. It was really different than other spanish cities, probably because they speak a lot of Catalan there, but still, it was cool to see the difference. Also, everything was stupidly expensive, but that's neither here nor there.I got to go to a Barcelona v. Malaga game on Sunday night and got to sport my Barca jersey. Got to see Xavi and Messi kick some serious ass...it was beautiful. Barca won 6-0, there just wasn't competition. I was a futbol fan before, but now i'm hooked. there's no going back. Baseball is still my number one, futbol (now) number 2 with tennis number 3.
About 10 days until I turn 21, I'm not sure if I'm pumped or bummed that I'm getting older. I mean, I'm a legit adult now...when did that happen?! Also, I'm bummed that I won't be with all my friends and Family at home for this one. I'll be with my friends here, and Kendra, so I'm WICKED excited for our trip to Paris and then to Rome, but I want everyone to be with me! SO!!! (wink wink) that would be real great if you could get here.
Ok, well first thing is first; Kendra came to visit me! Kendra and Maddie came about a week ago and we did some solid hang out time. Despite us going sight seeing and going to the beach, it was rather relaxing. I'm not overly sure if it was chill because I was with Kendra, or if it really was a pretty laid back weekend, none the less, we had a great time together. In about 2 weeks, we'll be back together for the spring break of our lives. I can't wait!!!!!!!!
On Saint Patrick's Day the group set out on our 3rd trip of the semester to Valencia and Barcelona. 6 hours later on the bus we were in Cullera, which is in Valencia and chilled out in our awesome apartments. I got to cook dinner. I made pasta (obviously, cheap and easy) and my own sauce!!! so satisfying! I really miss cooking, I almost cried when I thought the stove wouldn't work, but then we figured it out so all was well. The next day we went into town and participated in some festivities in the town and basically danced in the streets with the whole entire town. Thursday we went into Valencia, the city, and saw Las Fallas. Basically the 4th of July on crack. We went to this parade at around 8pm and it was just a half an hour of people dressed as devils and carrying flares and fireworks in their hands and setting them off. It was truly ridiculously amazing. Also, because it is just a HUGE botellon in the streets (a big out door party in the streets) we started our drinking at lunch, my drink of choice was my malibu/sunny d mix. delicious.
Las Fallas: HUGE paper machete sculptures painted with such detail that you think they are made of stone. The paper looks so smooth and hard, but its so light and papery, it's so bizarre. They were around 4 stories tall, easily. There were smaller ones that were maybe 6 or 7 ft tall, but the tallest were 4-6 stories tall. They were located ALL over the city, probably one or two per plaza...if you've ever been to spain you'd know the there is a plaza every 5 ft here. You pick one or two that are close that you want to see burn and chill out in a huge crowd of people singing and chanting "FUEGO" until the firworks technicians are ready to blow it up. We waited around 45 min for the one that we saw. then all of the sudden its this huge firworks display that is set off about 7ft in front of you and is right over your head and there is extreme worry about buildings burning down due to their proximity to the fire. Then in about 5 seconds the 4 story tall paper machete statue BURNS DOWN in the biggest bon fire you've ever been to. It's amazing. Probably MORE amazing is the amount of people in the streets setting off firecrackers EVERYWHERE. All ages, like kids 4 and up all the way to old people just lighting firecrackers in the streets where people are walking. Frightening.....I joined in a couple of times, but I'm no pyro.
Barcelona was BEAUTIFUL! I tried to get to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see if Uncle George still had some art there, but no dice, it closed before I got there. I really liked that city a lot. It was really different than other spanish cities, probably because they speak a lot of Catalan there, but still, it was cool to see the difference. Also, everything was stupidly expensive, but that's neither here nor there.I got to go to a Barcelona v. Malaga game on Sunday night and got to sport my Barca jersey. Got to see Xavi and Messi kick some serious ass...it was beautiful. Barca won 6-0, there just wasn't competition. I was a futbol fan before, but now i'm hooked. there's no going back. Baseball is still my number one, futbol (now) number 2 with tennis number 3.
About 10 days until I turn 21, I'm not sure if I'm pumped or bummed that I'm getting older. I mean, I'm a legit adult now...when did that happen?! Also, I'm bummed that I won't be with all my friends and Family at home for this one. I'll be with my friends here, and Kendra, so I'm WICKED excited for our trip to Paris and then to Rome, but I want everyone to be with me! SO!!! (wink wink) that would be real great if you could get here.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Do I do anything with my life?
I don nothing with my life. Not even just in Spain, but in general, I realize I do nothing productive ever. I try and think about things that I need to get done, I try to do the work that needs to get gone, but somehow I am always so easily side tracked. Two nights ago I realized that I hadn´t written in my journal at all over the last 2 weeks, so I wrote a 12page entry about the week I had spent in Galicia and Madrid. I had really wanted to keep it updated, or as updated as possible, hopefully enough to write a book!!! Maybe not though, haha, I am so unmotivated sometimes that the goals I set never actually are met. Like this book idea, will it ever be written when I get back home? Probably not, not unless someone writes it for me using my journal entries....hmm...maybe this is a whole chapter in and of itself. The unmotivation of the human race. Meh, it´ll come to me.
Spain is spainy, not much has changed in the last 8 weeks that I´ve been here other than my speaking skills improving. 11 weeks more and I´ll be home. I have some mixed feelings about this, when I add it all up its really onlike 7 weeks left, march is kind of a wash because people are coming to visit and we have another week long excursion, so by the time that spring break is over April 12th itll be like nothing. I miss home, I realize that I can live away from home and be happy and be fine, but I miss it. I miss being able to go home if I wanted. I know that I´ll miss being able to walk everywhere, and having a downtown on the street that I live on. I really love living in a city. I think that I´ll have some reverse culture shock going home, I´m going to miss the people I´ve been having a good time with here and the fact that noone speaks spanish in Hudson is kind of a let down...I have a feeling my spanish will go downhill this summer, I need to find a spanish friend! Maybe I´ll just only speak spanish to the people I know speak spanish. Hmm..whatever. It seems like its been forever, but not that long at all. I feel like last semester was a different year entirely. I feel like I love Spain, but I love the USA, something I didn´t know I loved until I wasn´t there anymore (it may actually make me a little more patriotic). I miss american chop suey. I love spanish tortilla. I love walking everywhere. I miss driving. I loved ham before I came here. I am sort of sick of it now. I am feeling rather mixed up at the moment.
Spain is spainy, not much has changed in the last 8 weeks that I´ve been here other than my speaking skills improving. 11 weeks more and I´ll be home. I have some mixed feelings about this, when I add it all up its really onlike 7 weeks left, march is kind of a wash because people are coming to visit and we have another week long excursion, so by the time that spring break is over April 12th itll be like nothing. I miss home, I realize that I can live away from home and be happy and be fine, but I miss it. I miss being able to go home if I wanted. I know that I´ll miss being able to walk everywhere, and having a downtown on the street that I live on. I really love living in a city. I think that I´ll have some reverse culture shock going home, I´m going to miss the people I´ve been having a good time with here and the fact that noone speaks spanish in Hudson is kind of a let down...I have a feeling my spanish will go downhill this summer, I need to find a spanish friend! Maybe I´ll just only speak spanish to the people I know speak spanish. Hmm..whatever. It seems like its been forever, but not that long at all. I feel like last semester was a different year entirely. I feel like I love Spain, but I love the USA, something I didn´t know I loved until I wasn´t there anymore (it may actually make me a little more patriotic). I miss american chop suey. I love spanish tortilla. I love walking everywhere. I miss driving. I loved ham before I came here. I am sort of sick of it now. I am feeling rather mixed up at the moment.
Monday, March 2, 2009
"Today I finally overcame, tryin' to fit the world inside a picture frame"
Words cannot describe this past week. I took over 300 pictures, and compared to other people, that's not a lot at all. We started our week in Barona, then we went to Santiago de Compostela, then A Coruna, THEN Madrid, Salamanca, and back to Madrid. It was the most amazing vacation away from a vacation I have ever had.
So no one knew that 3 out of 4 of our hotels would overlook the ocean, we were thoroughly surprised and extremely happy to sea water. Not just water though, it was the other side of the Atlantic, so it had that Atlantic-y smell and a cooler breeze than the Mediterranean has. I wish that I had brought a bathing suit, I would've gone swimming. There wasn't a day in Galicia that was gray or cloudy, everyday was beautiful and we were outside everyday. We went hiking, and site seeing, I love every second of this part of our trip. The only part that was a little annoying was that for the first 3 nights we had a different hotel in a different location, so we'd do our thing, get our stuff, get in a bus, and move to the next hotel a couple hours away. Not a bad deal.
Madrid was just as awesome as Galicia, I hit up the Royal Palaca for a tour, got some Museo de la Reina Sofia in there, anndddd of course El Prado!!! All 3 blew my mind basically. I saw "Girl in the Window"- Salvador Dali, "Guernica"-Picasso...AMAZING!!!!!Guernica itself was gigantic, and I could've stood there for hours just looking at it.
I could go into some pretty extreme detail about this week, but I'm not going to. As a whole, this week was pretty excellent, I had a great time travelling and know for sure that I need to travel in life to be truly happy.
So no one knew that 3 out of 4 of our hotels would overlook the ocean, we were thoroughly surprised and extremely happy to sea water. Not just water though, it was the other side of the Atlantic, so it had that Atlantic-y smell and a cooler breeze than the Mediterranean has. I wish that I had brought a bathing suit, I would've gone swimming. There wasn't a day in Galicia that was gray or cloudy, everyday was beautiful and we were outside everyday. We went hiking, and site seeing, I love every second of this part of our trip. The only part that was a little annoying was that for the first 3 nights we had a different hotel in a different location, so we'd do our thing, get our stuff, get in a bus, and move to the next hotel a couple hours away. Not a bad deal.
Madrid was just as awesome as Galicia, I hit up the Royal Palaca for a tour, got some Museo de la Reina Sofia in there, anndddd of course El Prado!!! All 3 blew my mind basically. I saw "Girl in the Window"- Salvador Dali, "Guernica"-Picasso...AMAZING!!!!!Guernica itself was gigantic, and I could've stood there for hours just looking at it.
I could go into some pretty extreme detail about this week, but I'm not going to. As a whole, this week was pretty excellent, I had a great time travelling and know for sure that I need to travel in life to be truly happy.
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