-Elizabeth: 2011

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Juzcar, Malaga

Juzcar!

It’s Sunday and we just got home a few hours ago from our trip with our intercambios, we went to Juzgar, Malaga. Earlier today Camille and I did the same things we did yesterday morning; we got up, prepared our lunch, had breakfast, walked to Avenida de Portugal and hopped on the bus. The only difference was that this time around the group was about the same size (60 or so people) but not everyone went on the trip, only half of us decided to go on this trip, a trip that was designed for us to spend the day with our intercambios and get to know them a little bit more. The purpose of this trip was to practice our Spanish with our intercambio while our intercambios practiced their English. My intercambio’s name is Fidel and he is a 29yr old computer engineer for various hospitals in Sevilla, he has a pretty neat job and it looks like he enjoys it a lot.

The drive was pretty…lame. I was so tired from walking around all over the City of Cordoba that I just wanted to sleep during the trip. I was glad to know that Fidel was a bit tired and he didn’t mind me falling asleep. Everyone sat with their intercambios and since Fidel and I had already met up for ice cream we had already done a lot of talking and getting to know each other. Dianna, Ted and I had met up earlier in the week for a “cervecita” at one of the local bars in Nervion. But anyways we slept on our way there and when we made a stop for a snack those who wanted to eat something got a tostada and some cola cao or coffee or a juice while some of us just used the bathroom and got right back on the bus.

Maria, Susana, Ted, Luis, Fidel, Dianna, Eric
Myself and another student.

Let me tell you why CC-CS decided to take us to Juzcar, with the recent release of the Smurfs movie, this tiny town in the middle of the nowhere decided to paint all of their houses blue! The entire town is BLUE and they have a little Mercado which they have named “Mercapitufo” the word for Smurf is Spanish is Pitufo and therefore everything had “pitufo” at the end word. I thought it was a bit odd but I went with it and a few weeks before I left the states my sister had given me a Smurfs t-shirt I was a bit excited about this… lol

The drive to Juzcar was very scary, once we got off the main highway we took a small road towards a hill and then from there it just got worst. The road turned into a gravel road with narrow turns and at one point we felt we were not going to make it not to mention our bus driver was not the best driver in Spain…

Ted "taking a shower"

When we got to the tiny city the first thing we saw was a GIANT sunflower, I do not kid when I say it is giant because it was taller than Ted, and if a flower is taller than 6 feet, it is automatically considered a GIANT! I asked Ted to stand next to it and pretend it was a shower, haha it was pretty funny :)

Fidel and I

The Smurf characters where painted all over the town and we took various pictures and then we headed to the Merca Pitufo and “shopped” around. There wasn’t that much stuff at the market, they had a lot of notebooks, pens, pencils, coffee mugs and although they were very nice they were overpriced. I was not about to spend 30 euros on a little kid umbrella… no way Jose!

SMILE!

We found papa smurf and we took pictures with them. The truth is that is all there was to do in this town. So we walked around for a bit and explored but then the enthusiasm went by and we just wanted to get back on the bus and visit the second town that was not on the schedule.

Juzcar:

Ted Being Silly

Sarah bought a smurf,
i think she named him Charlie

Merca Pitufo!

Juzcar, the ENTIRE town is BLUE!

Smurfette

Córdoba, España

Ted and Mary

I am very excited to tell you about my trip to the Ciudad de Cordoba! Camille and I walked this morning to Avenida de Portugal where we met all of our classmates and began our journey to Cordoba! Some of us where a bit tired because we had gone out the night before and we were supposed to be at the bus stop at 9am which meant Camille and I got up around 7am, I got up a bit earlier than that because I wanted to shower before we left, ugh BAD idea. Anyways, we did NOT leave on time because people didn’t make it to the bus stop on time… that was a bit annoying. Anyways, while we were waiting for the rest of the students to show up I was standing around and saw that Mary was leaning on Ted’s leg and it was funny because Mary is about 5 ft and Ted is almost 6ft. She looked like a 5 yr old leaning against a GIANT…Funny.

In the background you can see the bridge
that we walked to get to the city.

When we arrived at Cordoba, I was amazed at the beauty of the city and we weren’t even IN the city. The buses pulled up on one side of the street and while the instructors were making groups and handing out our tickets and stuff I was admiring the bridge that we would cross to enter the city. Yes, we had to walk over a bridge to enter the city and that was just unique, it was something that made the city memorable to me. I mean, seriously, how many times in your life do you get to “park” to cross a bridge to enter a city? When we walked across the bridge we encountered an arch that was the gate to enter the city. We were surprised at the sight of all the black cars with tinted windows that were driven by because we didn’t know what was going on. A lot of people walk around in Spain so it was surprising to see so many cars in one spot. Later in the day we found out there was some type of political event going on in the city while we were visiting.

This is the Arch we walked by as we entered the City of Cordoba

Piece of floor displayed
@ the Alcazar.

Myself, Kasey and Colleen
@ the Alcazar.

Once we were in our groups our instructor took my group to the Alcazar. An Alcazar is a Spanish palace or fortress, originally built by the Moors with a lot of Arab detail in it, the colors are unique and bright and the patterns all over the Alzacar are very unique. In the Alcazar we saw remaining from the Romans such as tombs stones, intact carpets, intact floors that have been preserved, we got a tour of the Arabic hot baths and we got to walk around the beautiful garden inside the walls of the Alcazar. Everything I saw in the Alcazar took my breath away and then I thought about how lucky I am that I will be going to the Alcazar in Sevilla next week!! :)

This was very interesting to watch...

Designs on one of
the walls of the Sinagoga.

After our time was up at the Alcazar we gather by one of the main roads of the city of Cordoba and got together with the main group and walked up the streets and headed to the Sinagoga. The trip there was intense because the streets are so narrow that if a car is driving by the pedestrians need to go inside a business of wait at the corner of the next street because both cannot occupy a street at the same time. I thought this was interesting especially because most of the cars that I have seen around are smaller than what I am used to back home. Once we got to the gate of the Sinagoga we were pushed and shoved all the way to the main door, it was a complete mess in there. There were way too many of us and not enough room not to mention it was extremely hot in there. This Sinagoga is very special to Spaniards for the sole reason that it is one of three that remain in Spain. The other two are located in Toledo which used to be the main city in Spain way back in the day, way, way, way back! I am hoping to learn more about the city of Toledo in my History class that will start next week :) On our way out of the Sinagoga we were also pushed and shoved…

Julia, Maria, Brooke, Susana, Dianna,
Myself, Kasey, Maria and Collen
Inside the Mezquita.

At 1pm we found our way to the Mezquita and the Cathedral, this is Cordoba’s main historic building. Building is not the word I should be using but I am going to anyways, this Mezquita has a lot of history behind its walls and it is so unique to any other piece of architecture that I will ever see. To begin, the Mezquita is composed of three main parts, there is a Patio called El Patio de los Naranjos which is still in the original designed from XVII, it is full of orange trees and water fountains and it is so green and beautiful and so relaxing. This patio led us to the main door to the actual Mezquita and I can’t begin to describe what I saw and how it felt. By this time Ted had taken my big camera because he likes and is a good photographer but he didn’t bring a camera so I gave him my camera. When I first walked into the Mezquita I was a bit surprised at how dark it was in there but at the same time I enjoyed the cool breeze that was coming out as I walked in. The first thing I saw was a big room with marble floors and lots of arches, there were many rows with these arches. It was beautiful.

The Arches inside the Mezquita.

Beautiful Flamenco Doll.

It was interesting that as we kept on walking to the center of the Mezquita we kept on seeing Catholic items and symbols which I thought was odd because the Mezquita is not related to Catholicism at all. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that our instructor told us that there was a Church built inside the Mezquita! When we reached to the center of the Mezquita we saw the altar of a Catholic Church and this was mind blowing, two religions under one roof?! Yup, it happened and it is still standing and this unique Mezquita is in Cordoba! After photographing this we headed out and were told that we could take our lunch break. We were having lunch at 230pm, I was starving by that time and I ate my entire lunch and had room for some ice cream. We were told that we could go eat and explore on our own for a few hours and then I we had to get back to the buses around 4pm.So we walked around the city for a few hours and explored the shops and apparently we were told not to talk to the gypsies in the city.I sort of missed out on that little chat because I might have been photographing the bridge that we had to cross to get to the city. But it turns out that Cordoba has a lot of gypsies and they are not kind people, they come up to you and tell you to hold something for them and then they ask you for money and demand that you pay them and if you don’t they supposedly put some type of curse on you. Well thank goodness Ted and Kasey pay attention to our instructors because I was approached multiple times and Ted scared the gypsies away from me. Thank you Ted! We walked around the city enjoying our ice cream and then headed to the buses and took some more pictures and then we slept the entire thought out the entire bus ride. We are getting so used to taking our siestas that everyone slept on the bus, everyone!

Susana, Dianna, Ted ("The Man") Myself, Kasey, and Collen.

I had so much fun on this trip with everyone from the Cross Cultural Center, it was nice to hang out with the entire group of 60 students because I don’t get to see about 40 of them and with our core classes coming up I doubt I will be seeing them any time soon. Tomorrow should be fun because we are going on a field trip with our Intercambios. My intercambio is pretty nice, I think it’s hilarious that he is my boyfriend’s age and he has the same job title as Bruce. I find this to be hilarious and we get a long and stuff but hanging out with him makes me miss Bruce :/ Which reminds me, I have a blackberry cellphone that has BBM and I can BBM Bruce whenever I want without getting charged a ridiculous amount of money. And Bruce looked into this app called Whatsapp and we can send videos, voicenotes and text messages and it’s awesome. I really like this app because I took so many pictures with my cell today and sent them to Bruce and my sister and parents and it is super neat to share with them what is going on with me. Although, sometimes I feel bad because of the 7 hours difference but so far they haven’t complained and I am lucky that Bruce and I are keeping constants communication. :)

Here are some more pictures from the trip!

Pretty fish at the Alcazar fountain

Sarah, Myself and Susana at the rendezvous.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

¡Feliz Cumpleaños Sarah Nelson!

Sept 13, 2012

Sarah and I

Since we got to Spain we have been trying to adapt to the culture, people, food, our schedules, ambient and at the same time we have been trying to get to know as many people as we can in the program. A lot of this can be somewhat overwhelming and to be honest I am so glad that by now most of this is out of the way, I am not done learning or adapting to the culture, or the food or the people but I am glad that I have a nice roommate who is nice to me and who I can talk to without stressing about whether or not she is going to listen to me or just ignore me. Anyway, a person that I have grown attached to is Sarah Nelson.

Sarah is an interesting character, we have this theory that she is the "Caucasian" version of me, and that my friends is a scary thought. She claims I am the Hispanic version of her, we are so similar, we have mad methods that lead to similar goals and I feel comfortable around her and vice versa. We are both currently enrolled in a class together but we have talked about our core classes and it turns out we will have a literature class together at the University; we are totally looking forward to this. We have also talked about planning a few trips together and this is something nice because I personally don’t like to travel in big groups and Sarah and I seem to be interested in the same things and we will see how that goes.

Yesterday, we found out today is Sarah's birthday, she is turning 22 and we are extremely excited about this because I think it’s a good excuse to get together with the rest of the students in the program and go out on a school night. I have taken the initiative and created an event via Facebook and invited everyone from the program. I think it’s important that we all get together and celebrate Sarah's birthday because she is a student in the program, we are all away from our family and friends and I feel that since we have all been together since we got here earlier this month we are each other's family!

We made it clear we all wanted to celebrate Sarah’s birthday and make her happy but at the same time we don’t want to stay out too late because we all have classes early in the morning the next and midterms are this Friday so it is very important we have fun but not go too crazy. Dianna, Susana and I got together before dinner and we went to El Corte Ingles which is a huge mall and we went looking for a birthday card for Sarah. Once we got the card we went to our homes, had dinner and then got together to walk to the Cien Montaditos which is a bar near the Center of Sevilla by the Cathedral, that’s where we would start the Party!

Sarah, Dianna, Myself, Chris, Laura and Susana

Susana, Colleen, Laura, Chris, Kasey
Camille, Maria, Dianna, Sarah and Elisa

When we got there we were happy to see a lot of the students had made it and we passed around the birthday card and everyone got to sign it and when we felt the time was right, which was about two or three sangrias later we gave the card to Sarah and she loved it!

Birthday Girl!

A lot of us decided to go home around midnight while some of us decided to head out to other bars across the river and keep on celebrating Sarah’s birthday. We went to this bar where they had free Sangria for the ladies; we thought it would be really nice to enjoy a free drink in honor of Sarah’s birthday. The bar was really nice, there was a bull in the back room, there were some pool tables and there was a beer pong tournament going on. We thought this was very cool. We met up with more buddies there and it was really nice that some of our classmates had invited their intercambios because that way we got to know more of them and it was nice to speak some English. Speaking of that, we are not allowed to speak English, we signed this contract and everyone has to speak Spanish, which is nice and Sarah’s Spanish is excellente! As the free Sangrias and birthday drinks kept on getting poured for the birthday girl we all thought it would be cool to take pictures with the bull in the backroom and that is exactly what we did. Some of these pictures are hilarious others we were just being silly!

Colleen, Myself, Dianna, Maria, the Birthday Girl and the BULL!

Maria

Ted made a new friend last night.

This is as close as i will ever get to "riding" a bull.

Sarah trying to replicate my pose, she used a step to get up there.

Reed having fun :)

After a few sangrias we were best friends.

Grant took the bull by the horns.

To all of this, we celebrated Sarah’s 22^nd birthday to the fullest, I was one of the last people to leave and I left around 3 almost 4 in the morning, I didn’t even realize how late it was, and that is great because it means I was having a really good time :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH!