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

The second city that we went to was on our way home, a town called Zahara de la Sierra and it was a nice place, it was my favorite part of the trip. The town is nice and small and it has a castle, which a few of us decided to go to when we were given free time. The views this town has are beautiful, and that is all we did here, we walked around and ate and climb the walls of the castle and then we met up by the buses. It was very nice that was all we did because a lot of us were tired from yesterday’s trip and all I wanted to do with that heat was jump in the shower or go swimming, which was crazy because there was a lot of water around but we couldn’t go swimming :/

This is the view we had of Zahara de la Sierra as we got close to the town, look at the water!

Here are some pictures of today, I am very tired and its late and I have a nice half an hour walk tomorrow morning before class :)

 I am sitting on the ledge of the castle's wall... loved it!

 The view of Zahara de la Sierra from a window
 from the castle we visited, very nice.

Sarah and I were at the front of the crowd walking up the hill towards the castle! 

 View of the water around Zahara from the castle we visited.

A Spanish girl, Susana, Sarah, Fidel, Dianna, myself and Luis inside one of the rooms in the castle

Another view of Zahara from the top of the castle

Side view of the castle we visited