Well, in about 20 min I will be leaving for the airport to catch a plane to Venice. Spain has been fun, has been crazy, has been frustrating, but definitely enjoyable, and I feel ready to leave. I´m not sure if I will be able to post in Italy, but, after I get home I will probably post more stories and pictures that I didn´t get a chance to talk about earlier. Thank you all for reading and sharing with me. See you soon!
Gianna
miércoles, 20 de junio de 2007
jueves, 14 de junio de 2007
Wow, it has been a little longer than I´ve wanted since I´ve written last. Let´s see if I can fit everything in to one post.
Last Thursday we went to a Corpus Cristi celebration in Cumuñas. I don´t completely understand Corpus Cristi and this didn´t help at all. I guess it is a really old tradition here dating back hundreds of years, so I guess that it is why it is so weird. So we arrive there, it is at least 85 degrees outside, and there is this huge group of men dancing around in the town square. They are in capes and costumes covered in ribbons and have red masks sitting on top of their heads. They all have tambourines and there is a guy beating out a rhythm on a drum and they were just dancing around in that circle forever. I thought they were going to get heat stroke with all of that heavy clothing. I was getting kind of bored with the circle dance but then they started the procession. The streets were covered in rosemary and in the heat everything smelled wonderful. The ground was either painted with symbols of the celebration--like masks or symbols of the sacrament--or carpets had been laid out to mark the path of the procession. Flowers in baskets were strung up in the air between the houses so they crossed over the procession path.
So we lined up to see what everything was all about and let me tell you I was not prepared. Everything started out okay. They had pulled their masks over their faces, they were all red with huge long noses and some of them had horns or black painted facial hair. They had a special little dance they did as they walked down the street and they were all still playing drums or tambourines. We could see their capes better at this point and all of them were painted with religious scenes like Christ on the cross or doves. Some of them were pretty elaborate. So all of the masked dancers pass us and behind them are four girls probably in their 20´s. They are all wearing the same nice dress and this traditional Spanish headpiece that is covered in lace and drapes down like a shawl. The main girl is carrying a 6 or 7 foot crucifix that has a wreath and a statue of Christ on it. In complete Spanish fashion, one of the cross bearer girls had a lip ring and I thought that Jesus probably didn´t appreciate that. Behind them were a bunch of little girls in white dresses throwing flower petals and behind them was a priest. He was carrying some sort of sceptre and there were four people walking with him holding up the posts of this device that I think was supposed to shade him. About the time the flower girls start walking by a lot of townspeople had drifted into the procession. The mothers of the flower girls fixing their hair and giving them water, and old people and nuns walking with the priest.
So we are still trying to figure out what was so exciting about this that we drove two hours to see it, and then we start hearing people screaming. We walk up towards the cross bearing girls and the masked men are running at them yelling at the top of their lungs. Right before they reach the cross they rip off their mask with a flourish, bow to the cross and run away. They run one at a time one after the other. They make this kind of high pitched Xena the Warrior princess battle cry as they run, about ten feet before the cross they do a little leap, and then they keep running and end in a bow. They just kept doing this over and over again for a couple of hours. I guess the dancer men represent sinners and the different colors on their costume represent the kind of sins they have committed and the longer the noses are, the more sins they have under their belt. When they reach the Christ statue they are purified and they remove their mask which is representative of their sins. Very beautiful symbolism, but just a weird way to present it.
During the procession they of course have to have breaks, so around the city they have place various shrines with statues and flowers. When the priest at the back of the procession reached a shrine this old man with a musket would fire it and everything would go quiet. The music would stop and all of the dancers would take a knee and remove their mask. The priest would say some sort of blessing and then everyone would recite an Our Father, and the dancers and women in the procession took this time to drink water handed to them by family members standing on the sides of the procession. After the Our Father the gun would go off again and everything would start all over again. It was a bizarre yet interesting experience. After we watched the dancers for a while we got tired of pushing to get a view and we started lagging towards the back of the procession with the priest and the elderly. This was actually my favorite part. While all the craziness was happening at the front of the line, these people were all walking slowly together. They were dressed in their Sunday best singing peaceful hymns as they walked. It was really touching to see these people who still held on to their faith and probably still went to Mass every Sunday rather than slipping into worldliness that is pretty prevalent in Spain. I was really beautiful.
Also on this trip we went to the windmills that Cervantes wrote about in "Don Quijote." They were really picturesque and I´ll post some photos of them if I get time.
We went on another trip on Saturday and, among other things, we went to the Vally of the Fallen. A little background information, I´m a little fuzzy on the dates, but from about WWII to around 1976 Spain was under a dictator named Francisco Franco. He was pretty awful. He involved them in lots of civil and foreign wars and a lot of people died. The Valley of the Fallen is a monument built by Franco. It is completely in the middle of nowhere on the top of a mountain in the middle of a huge forest in the Spanish countryside. It creates a beautiful sight because there is this vast carpet of green trees and then on top of the highest peak there is this giant cross hundreds of feet high. The base of the cross has these colossal figures of mythological characters and animals. One of their toes was probably longer than my whole arm to give you an idea. The thing is massive, I really can´t describe it properly. So this monument was built to commemorate all of Franco´s soldiers that died in battle. But the whole thing is bittersweet because it was built by the slave labor of prisoners of war and many of them died in construction. I guess if one of them died, or maybe they didn´t even have to be dead yet, they would get dumped into crevases of the monument and the other workers would have to build over them. A lot of Spaniards don´t like to go up there because of everything that happened. I guess Franco´s grave is there as well but I didn´t realize it until we had already left. My friend Julie said it was in this huge, cold, dark marble tomb and his coffin is at the end of a long hallway. She also said she spat on his grave, but I´m sure a lot of people have or wanted to have done that.
Hmmm, what else have I been doing. There are three fantastic art museums in Madrid and we have been visiting them a lot lately. On Sundays admission to the Prado is free so we took a train up there after church. We saw a lot of amazing paintings by Carevaggio, Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Velazquez, el Greco, Ribera, Murrillo, just to name a few. We ended up looking at all the Goya paintings because they have an entire floor dedicated to him. I don´t know if any of you know anything about art, but Goya´s paintings are absolutely crazy. But also intensely interesting and I was really excited to see them. The most confusing are his Black Paintings that he did shortly before his death. They are all creepy with really dark themes and the weirdest part is, they were all murals that he painted on the walls of his house. I would have hated to be his maid and to walk through that demented place every day. Just to give you an idea, one of the most famous black painting is called "Saturn Devouring His Son." There is a classical myth in which Saturn receives a prophecy that one of his children will kill him, so he ate every one of them as soon as they were born. Goya´s painting, of course, depicts this ancient man with wild hair and bulging, crazy eyes holding a partially devoured body. Goya painted this in his dining room. I would personally never have an apetite while looking at that, but maybe he just got used to it. If you want to see a few of them here is a website: http://www.theartwolf.com/goya_black_paintings.htm. I´m not sure if they have bigger versions but if one interests you I´m sure it´ll be online somewhere.
On a lighter note, a Van Gogh exhibit opened in the Thyssen the other day and we got to see it! We were actually planning on going just to see the permanent collection but while we were on the train to Madrid a newspaper on the seat next to me had an article about it. Right place at the right time, I was so happy. The exhibit is called the Last Landscapes because he painted them all in the two months before he killed himself. They were all so interesting and beautiful, but Spain, being the frustrating place that it is, attempted to ruin it for me. Everything has to be as inconvenient as possible or the country just won´t run right. We got there and first, they wouldn´t let us buy a ticket to the whole museum, just to specific exhibits, which meant we could only look at the Van Goghs. So we pay our 3.50 Euros and are all pumped to go when the ticket lady tells us our tickets are for 1:oo. We have to meet our friends at 2:00 and it is only 12:20 so we had 40 min where we weren´t even allowed to go look at the rest of the museum. They only let you buy tickets for specific hours so the exhibit is really crowded and you have to maneuver around people and sneak into their spots when they go to look at other paintings. But no matter, it was amazing to see them and there were even some paintings by Cezanne on dispaly so I was excited to see those. I´ve decided that I´m going to sacrifice another 4.50 Euros because I´ve heard the rest of the museum is great. Hopefully the museum of modern art has a free day and I´ll visit it then.
Hmmm, so random in random events, my lit teacher continues to change our syllabus, but he has gotten kind of lazy so he keeps canceling assignments. The previous two days he only played a movie so I skipped class both days to go to Madrid. So many people ditched yesterday that he just canceled class. Today we turned in another big paper and I just couldn´t stomach writing another one for Monday. My friend Julie--the grave spitter--is really bold, can easily get her way, and speaks way better Spanish than I do, so I decided to collaborate with her to lighten our work load. She played a large role in the cancelation of our final test so I had confidence in her skills. I asked her to suggest that the last paper be canceled, and it just happened to be one of the student´s birthdays, so she asked if, as a birthday present to him, if we didn´t have to do the final paper. At first I thought he wouldn´t give because he started asking us why we didn´t come to class the day before. He acted like he had prepared some grand lesson--which, by the way, he has never done in the history of our class because all we ever do is read photocopies of his lesson book and listen to him go off on random tangents about unimportant information that we immediately forget--but really we knew that the only thing we would have done is sit in the dark and fall asleep. So we can tell he is annoyed that we ditched out on him, but Julie starts up again breaking down his defenses. Finally, after whining that we have to prepare a final project and study for a test, we get him to agree to just a quiz so we can prove we read the book. He said that we must all be studying economy or something that involved being able to weasel out of work. I don´t feel bad, though, because it was just busywork and I´m not sure if he even did more than skim it. Our teacher also dropped a Spanish F bomb today when he couldn´t remember someone´s name. He has sworn like this multiple times and I wonder if he just doesn´t notice or just thinks we don´t know what he is saying. But I don´t know how that could be true because Spanish people use that word about 3 times per sentence so there is no way we wouldn´t have heard it before. Mexican and Spanish curses are different, so most of us came not knowing any of the Spanish ones. When my neighbor found out what it was, she said she had been wondering for weeks what the word meant because her host brother used it every other word but she couldn´t understand what he was saying. After I figured it out I noticed that word used frequently in dinnertime conversation or every once in a while we could hear the teenagers in the house yelling it when we were up in our room. I wonder why it is so common.
Well, I´m glad I got to write to you all, but I´m running out of creative juices so I´m going to end this post. We´re going on our last trip tomorrow so I´ll be sure to tell you all about it. See you all soon!
Gianna
Last Thursday we went to a Corpus Cristi celebration in Cumuñas. I don´t completely understand Corpus Cristi and this didn´t help at all. I guess it is a really old tradition here dating back hundreds of years, so I guess that it is why it is so weird. So we arrive there, it is at least 85 degrees outside, and there is this huge group of men dancing around in the town square. They are in capes and costumes covered in ribbons and have red masks sitting on top of their heads. They all have tambourines and there is a guy beating out a rhythm on a drum and they were just dancing around in that circle forever. I thought they were going to get heat stroke with all of that heavy clothing. I was getting kind of bored with the circle dance but then they started the procession. The streets were covered in rosemary and in the heat everything smelled wonderful. The ground was either painted with symbols of the celebration--like masks or symbols of the sacrament--or carpets had been laid out to mark the path of the procession. Flowers in baskets were strung up in the air between the houses so they crossed over the procession path.
So we lined up to see what everything was all about and let me tell you I was not prepared. Everything started out okay. They had pulled their masks over their faces, they were all red with huge long noses and some of them had horns or black painted facial hair. They had a special little dance they did as they walked down the street and they were all still playing drums or tambourines. We could see their capes better at this point and all of them were painted with religious scenes like Christ on the cross or doves. Some of them were pretty elaborate. So all of the masked dancers pass us and behind them are four girls probably in their 20´s. They are all wearing the same nice dress and this traditional Spanish headpiece that is covered in lace and drapes down like a shawl. The main girl is carrying a 6 or 7 foot crucifix that has a wreath and a statue of Christ on it. In complete Spanish fashion, one of the cross bearer girls had a lip ring and I thought that Jesus probably didn´t appreciate that. Behind them were a bunch of little girls in white dresses throwing flower petals and behind them was a priest. He was carrying some sort of sceptre and there were four people walking with him holding up the posts of this device that I think was supposed to shade him. About the time the flower girls start walking by a lot of townspeople had drifted into the procession. The mothers of the flower girls fixing their hair and giving them water, and old people and nuns walking with the priest.
So we are still trying to figure out what was so exciting about this that we drove two hours to see it, and then we start hearing people screaming. We walk up towards the cross bearing girls and the masked men are running at them yelling at the top of their lungs. Right before they reach the cross they rip off their mask with a flourish, bow to the cross and run away. They run one at a time one after the other. They make this kind of high pitched Xena the Warrior princess battle cry as they run, about ten feet before the cross they do a little leap, and then they keep running and end in a bow. They just kept doing this over and over again for a couple of hours. I guess the dancer men represent sinners and the different colors on their costume represent the kind of sins they have committed and the longer the noses are, the more sins they have under their belt. When they reach the Christ statue they are purified and they remove their mask which is representative of their sins. Very beautiful symbolism, but just a weird way to present it.
During the procession they of course have to have breaks, so around the city they have place various shrines with statues and flowers. When the priest at the back of the procession reached a shrine this old man with a musket would fire it and everything would go quiet. The music would stop and all of the dancers would take a knee and remove their mask. The priest would say some sort of blessing and then everyone would recite an Our Father, and the dancers and women in the procession took this time to drink water handed to them by family members standing on the sides of the procession. After the Our Father the gun would go off again and everything would start all over again. It was a bizarre yet interesting experience. After we watched the dancers for a while we got tired of pushing to get a view and we started lagging towards the back of the procession with the priest and the elderly. This was actually my favorite part. While all the craziness was happening at the front of the line, these people were all walking slowly together. They were dressed in their Sunday best singing peaceful hymns as they walked. It was really touching to see these people who still held on to their faith and probably still went to Mass every Sunday rather than slipping into worldliness that is pretty prevalent in Spain. I was really beautiful.
Also on this trip we went to the windmills that Cervantes wrote about in "Don Quijote." They were really picturesque and I´ll post some photos of them if I get time.
We went on another trip on Saturday and, among other things, we went to the Vally of the Fallen. A little background information, I´m a little fuzzy on the dates, but from about WWII to around 1976 Spain was under a dictator named Francisco Franco. He was pretty awful. He involved them in lots of civil and foreign wars and a lot of people died. The Valley of the Fallen is a monument built by Franco. It is completely in the middle of nowhere on the top of a mountain in the middle of a huge forest in the Spanish countryside. It creates a beautiful sight because there is this vast carpet of green trees and then on top of the highest peak there is this giant cross hundreds of feet high. The base of the cross has these colossal figures of mythological characters and animals. One of their toes was probably longer than my whole arm to give you an idea. The thing is massive, I really can´t describe it properly. So this monument was built to commemorate all of Franco´s soldiers that died in battle. But the whole thing is bittersweet because it was built by the slave labor of prisoners of war and many of them died in construction. I guess if one of them died, or maybe they didn´t even have to be dead yet, they would get dumped into crevases of the monument and the other workers would have to build over them. A lot of Spaniards don´t like to go up there because of everything that happened. I guess Franco´s grave is there as well but I didn´t realize it until we had already left. My friend Julie said it was in this huge, cold, dark marble tomb and his coffin is at the end of a long hallway. She also said she spat on his grave, but I´m sure a lot of people have or wanted to have done that.
Hmmm, what else have I been doing. There are three fantastic art museums in Madrid and we have been visiting them a lot lately. On Sundays admission to the Prado is free so we took a train up there after church. We saw a lot of amazing paintings by Carevaggio, Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Velazquez, el Greco, Ribera, Murrillo, just to name a few. We ended up looking at all the Goya paintings because they have an entire floor dedicated to him. I don´t know if any of you know anything about art, but Goya´s paintings are absolutely crazy. But also intensely interesting and I was really excited to see them. The most confusing are his Black Paintings that he did shortly before his death. They are all creepy with really dark themes and the weirdest part is, they were all murals that he painted on the walls of his house. I would have hated to be his maid and to walk through that demented place every day. Just to give you an idea, one of the most famous black painting is called "Saturn Devouring His Son." There is a classical myth in which Saturn receives a prophecy that one of his children will kill him, so he ate every one of them as soon as they were born. Goya´s painting, of course, depicts this ancient man with wild hair and bulging, crazy eyes holding a partially devoured body. Goya painted this in his dining room. I would personally never have an apetite while looking at that, but maybe he just got used to it. If you want to see a few of them here is a website: http://www.theartwolf.com/goya_black_paintings.htm. I´m not sure if they have bigger versions but if one interests you I´m sure it´ll be online somewhere.
On a lighter note, a Van Gogh exhibit opened in the Thyssen the other day and we got to see it! We were actually planning on going just to see the permanent collection but while we were on the train to Madrid a newspaper on the seat next to me had an article about it. Right place at the right time, I was so happy. The exhibit is called the Last Landscapes because he painted them all in the two months before he killed himself. They were all so interesting and beautiful, but Spain, being the frustrating place that it is, attempted to ruin it for me. Everything has to be as inconvenient as possible or the country just won´t run right. We got there and first, they wouldn´t let us buy a ticket to the whole museum, just to specific exhibits, which meant we could only look at the Van Goghs. So we pay our 3.50 Euros and are all pumped to go when the ticket lady tells us our tickets are for 1:oo. We have to meet our friends at 2:00 and it is only 12:20 so we had 40 min where we weren´t even allowed to go look at the rest of the museum. They only let you buy tickets for specific hours so the exhibit is really crowded and you have to maneuver around people and sneak into their spots when they go to look at other paintings. But no matter, it was amazing to see them and there were even some paintings by Cezanne on dispaly so I was excited to see those. I´ve decided that I´m going to sacrifice another 4.50 Euros because I´ve heard the rest of the museum is great. Hopefully the museum of modern art has a free day and I´ll visit it then.
Hmmm, so random in random events, my lit teacher continues to change our syllabus, but he has gotten kind of lazy so he keeps canceling assignments. The previous two days he only played a movie so I skipped class both days to go to Madrid. So many people ditched yesterday that he just canceled class. Today we turned in another big paper and I just couldn´t stomach writing another one for Monday. My friend Julie--the grave spitter--is really bold, can easily get her way, and speaks way better Spanish than I do, so I decided to collaborate with her to lighten our work load. She played a large role in the cancelation of our final test so I had confidence in her skills. I asked her to suggest that the last paper be canceled, and it just happened to be one of the student´s birthdays, so she asked if, as a birthday present to him, if we didn´t have to do the final paper. At first I thought he wouldn´t give because he started asking us why we didn´t come to class the day before. He acted like he had prepared some grand lesson--which, by the way, he has never done in the history of our class because all we ever do is read photocopies of his lesson book and listen to him go off on random tangents about unimportant information that we immediately forget--but really we knew that the only thing we would have done is sit in the dark and fall asleep. So we can tell he is annoyed that we ditched out on him, but Julie starts up again breaking down his defenses. Finally, after whining that we have to prepare a final project and study for a test, we get him to agree to just a quiz so we can prove we read the book. He said that we must all be studying economy or something that involved being able to weasel out of work. I don´t feel bad, though, because it was just busywork and I´m not sure if he even did more than skim it. Our teacher also dropped a Spanish F bomb today when he couldn´t remember someone´s name. He has sworn like this multiple times and I wonder if he just doesn´t notice or just thinks we don´t know what he is saying. But I don´t know how that could be true because Spanish people use that word about 3 times per sentence so there is no way we wouldn´t have heard it before. Mexican and Spanish curses are different, so most of us came not knowing any of the Spanish ones. When my neighbor found out what it was, she said she had been wondering for weeks what the word meant because her host brother used it every other word but she couldn´t understand what he was saying. After I figured it out I noticed that word used frequently in dinnertime conversation or every once in a while we could hear the teenagers in the house yelling it when we were up in our room. I wonder why it is so common.
Well, I´m glad I got to write to you all, but I´m running out of creative juices so I´m going to end this post. We´re going on our last trip tomorrow so I´ll be sure to tell you all about it. See you all soon!
Gianna
miércoles, 6 de junio de 2007
Odds and Ends
I just finished a gigantic paper and gigantic test so now I get write!!!!! Hooray!!!!! I´m getting a little homesick here, but I´m ok. One of the problems is school, but we just got over a big hump and that stress is over, and the other problem is our family. My host dad is still in the hospital and it is pretty obvious that they don´t want us around anymore. They have to feed us and put up with us being in their house and they are sick of it. We just feel awkward. Well I guess there is a third problem and that is Europe in general. It can be a pretty frustrating place at times, and it can make one a little grumpy. Just the cultural differences and the way things run here makes you miss America. And the food, the food could definitely improve. That is part of the reason why we know they are tired of us, their like for us is directly proportional to the amount of time they spend on our meals, and they have been getting pretty bad. But not to worry, Ricardo comes home next week and school is getting easier, so our family won´t be stressed and neither will I.
Our teachers can´t really make up their minds about how difficult they want our classes to be. My lit class has a different syllabus every other day, usually for the worst, but today the happy change was the cancelation of our final test. Now our final will be to bring in poems and read them to the class. Today we went to the changing of the guard and it was interesting for about 5 min. They had all of these guards riding around on horses and in carriages that were towing cannons. They would interweve around and around each other in circles and it was a little repetative. My favorite was the head guy who did circles by himself in front of us and then would force his horse to walk sideways. His horse was pretty ticked about it. So after all of the horses went away it was just people so we went to our favorite cafe for lunch and then went shopping. Then we had to go to dreaded class and to cheer ourselves up we went shopping again after that. We took the train to a city we had never been to because we´d heard some good things, but we had no idea where to go. We were trying to figure it out when this random African guy walked up to us and started speaking to us in really good English. The border is really close so there are tons of African immigrants here. I was kind of wary of him because men are constantly whistling or kissing at us and basically just being intolerable so I was afraid he would give us the typical ¨Blonde I love you¨ ¨Hey girl¨ or ¨Americana!¨ cat call in broken English that the Spaniards are so fond of, but he was really nice. He asked us if we were looking for the mall and gave us directions, asked us where we were from, and then told us to enjoy his home town as if he was the mayor or something. He was really a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of Spaniards. They are such a cold people! Or they are just plain crude/rude. The other day Kristen and I were hurrying down a street and this creepy guy old enough to be our father asked us to have coffee with him. We always get senile old men approaching us and asking us weird questions. We have no tolerance left for these people. The coldness is usally pretty evident when we go shopping because the salesgirls can be absolute terrors. They think we are all incompetant drooling morons because we can´t speak perfect Spanish and they treat us accordingly. My friend asked one where to find a specific blouse and the girl purposely misled her, and maybe it doesn´t sound that bad, but these stores we shop at usually have 3 to 5 levels so you can get sent on some wild goose chases. I had a bad experience with one girl today. I was trying on clothes and granted I was taking my time, but I wasn´t occupying a dressing room for no reason. I left my dressing room to show my friend my pants and the salesgirl tried to let someone into my room. I told her I was still using it and she answers very snottily that I can´t just hang around, I have to let other people through. Well, yes, I´m not from Mars, I understand how dressing rooms work, but if you insist I´ll just wear this unbought clothing right out of the store. But some people, like that nice man today, really redeem the country. Like in Salamanca we went into a cd store looking for a specific type of music and the saleswoman spent ten minutes with us showing us different cds and playing different selections for us. Another time I was in a different store looking for a cd, and a different saleslady looked through every row of discount cds to help me find the one I wanted. You really learn to appreciate that kind of thing here. Today a man heard us speaking English and he walked up to us and said, ¨God bless America!¨ and then excitedly asked us what part of the states we were from so he could see if he´d been there. My absolute favorite episode occurred when my friend Robynn got bombarded by a pigeon. We were walking into a cathedral and we passed a beggar in a wheelchair. There are tons of beggars here so you kind of have to learn to just walk by them, even though you feel terrible about it. So we reach the door and Robynn gets splattered with crap and we are all digging for tissues to try and get her cleaned up. In the midst of all of this, the man in the wheelchair quietly approaches, offers her a tissue and directs her to the nearest bathroom. He was so kind to us after we had passed by him without even a glance, it was a very touching experience.
I can´t think of anything else good that we´ve done lately, so I´ll just share some random obervations about Spain. Speedbumps: Spanish streets have speedbumps about every 50 feet, so good luck trying to get anywhere in a hurry. Some of them also have dividers all the way up the middle, so if you want to make a left turn, you have to go to the end of the street, enter a roundabout and then drive back to where you want to go on the other side of the street. Some of the crosswalk signs here have a little man who actually looks like he is walking. His legs move when you are allowed to cross, and when it gets towards the end of the time, he runs really fast. Typical Spaniard: typical Spaniards are shorter than I am dark-complected and have very large noses. They also all speak in the same nasally voice. We will always here our host dad talking behind us and then turn around just to find some random man. They really all sound exactly the same. They also all say the world ¨Vale¨ about 100 times per sentance. Chocolate: Spaniards are obsessed with chocolate. Everything has chocolate in it. My favorite is the granola cereal we eat every morning that contains milk and dark chocolate flakes. Cereal boxes: all of the cereal boxes here are obsessed with telling you how healthy they are and all the reasons why you should eat them. But, in my experience, Spaniards don´t really seem to care that much about their health because the only things they seem to like doing are smoking, drinking, and driving recklessly. Cigarette cartons: all of the cigarette boxes here are printed with giant warnings that you can read from about 10 feet away. Common ones are ¨Smoking can kill,¨ ¨Smoking causes impotence and lowers sperm count,¨ and my favorite, the one I wish everyone would consider, is ¨Smoking greatly endangers your health and the health of those around you.¨ There is a sucker company I have seen that makes fun of this. The box is shaped kind of like a cigarette box and has ¨Sucking can´t kill¨ printed on it just like the cigarette warnings. It cracks me up. Ice cream: They have ice cream/candy/pop stands here about every twenty feet. Just stick your hands out in both directions and you are sure to hit one. Siesta: Spaniards have a siesta from 2 to 5 every day. Stores are usally closed at this time. This is very frustrating because most stores open at 10 to 12 in the morning and close at 7 so it is basically impossible to buy anything. Things are open longer hours in Madrid, but here in Alcala I have no idea how stores stay in business. One day, I was craving a bacon egg an cheese buscuit so I wandered into McDonalds at 10:30 in the morning. The man told me to leave and said that they didn´t open until 12. I was really sad to be thwarted by one of the most American institutions every. You should be able to rely on McDonalds! Even if it is mediocrity it is familiar mediocrity! Milk: milk here comes in boxes and doesn´t need to be refrigerated. It really sucks having warm milk on your cereal every day. Couples: Spanish couples are rediculously overly-demonstrative. They will make out and grope in public without the slightest bit of shame. Once I saw a girl on the bus trying to give her boyfriend a hicky. Every morning we ride the bus to school with a couple of 16 year old that are almost constantly making out. I´m guessing they have a pretty high teenage pregnancy rate here. Nuns: they have nuns everywhere here. Once, I asked one for directions and she grabbed ahold of my arm. She told me I was pretty like the virgen and kept kissing me on the cheeks. I was really happy when another nun drove by to pick her up because I´m pretty sure she was trying to kidnap me and force me into the convent. Ants: we have an ant infestation in our kitchen. Someone in the house likes to kill them, but then doesn´t clean them up. Yesterday I walked down to breakfast and the table was littered with mooshed ant corpses. But on the bright side, our family has finally started covering our food when they leave it on the counter! Every cloud has a silver lining.
Well, I´m exhausted so I am going to bed. See you all very soon!
Gianna
Our teachers can´t really make up their minds about how difficult they want our classes to be. My lit class has a different syllabus every other day, usually for the worst, but today the happy change was the cancelation of our final test. Now our final will be to bring in poems and read them to the class. Today we went to the changing of the guard and it was interesting for about 5 min. They had all of these guards riding around on horses and in carriages that were towing cannons. They would interweve around and around each other in circles and it was a little repetative. My favorite was the head guy who did circles by himself in front of us and then would force his horse to walk sideways. His horse was pretty ticked about it. So after all of the horses went away it was just people so we went to our favorite cafe for lunch and then went shopping. Then we had to go to dreaded class and to cheer ourselves up we went shopping again after that. We took the train to a city we had never been to because we´d heard some good things, but we had no idea where to go. We were trying to figure it out when this random African guy walked up to us and started speaking to us in really good English. The border is really close so there are tons of African immigrants here. I was kind of wary of him because men are constantly whistling or kissing at us and basically just being intolerable so I was afraid he would give us the typical ¨Blonde I love you¨ ¨Hey girl¨ or ¨Americana!¨ cat call in broken English that the Spaniards are so fond of, but he was really nice. He asked us if we were looking for the mall and gave us directions, asked us where we were from, and then told us to enjoy his home town as if he was the mayor or something. He was really a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of Spaniards. They are such a cold people! Or they are just plain crude/rude. The other day Kristen and I were hurrying down a street and this creepy guy old enough to be our father asked us to have coffee with him. We always get senile old men approaching us and asking us weird questions. We have no tolerance left for these people. The coldness is usally pretty evident when we go shopping because the salesgirls can be absolute terrors. They think we are all incompetant drooling morons because we can´t speak perfect Spanish and they treat us accordingly. My friend asked one where to find a specific blouse and the girl purposely misled her, and maybe it doesn´t sound that bad, but these stores we shop at usually have 3 to 5 levels so you can get sent on some wild goose chases. I had a bad experience with one girl today. I was trying on clothes and granted I was taking my time, but I wasn´t occupying a dressing room for no reason. I left my dressing room to show my friend my pants and the salesgirl tried to let someone into my room. I told her I was still using it and she answers very snottily that I can´t just hang around, I have to let other people through. Well, yes, I´m not from Mars, I understand how dressing rooms work, but if you insist I´ll just wear this unbought clothing right out of the store. But some people, like that nice man today, really redeem the country. Like in Salamanca we went into a cd store looking for a specific type of music and the saleswoman spent ten minutes with us showing us different cds and playing different selections for us. Another time I was in a different store looking for a cd, and a different saleslady looked through every row of discount cds to help me find the one I wanted. You really learn to appreciate that kind of thing here. Today a man heard us speaking English and he walked up to us and said, ¨God bless America!¨ and then excitedly asked us what part of the states we were from so he could see if he´d been there. My absolute favorite episode occurred when my friend Robynn got bombarded by a pigeon. We were walking into a cathedral and we passed a beggar in a wheelchair. There are tons of beggars here so you kind of have to learn to just walk by them, even though you feel terrible about it. So we reach the door and Robynn gets splattered with crap and we are all digging for tissues to try and get her cleaned up. In the midst of all of this, the man in the wheelchair quietly approaches, offers her a tissue and directs her to the nearest bathroom. He was so kind to us after we had passed by him without even a glance, it was a very touching experience.
I can´t think of anything else good that we´ve done lately, so I´ll just share some random obervations about Spain. Speedbumps: Spanish streets have speedbumps about every 50 feet, so good luck trying to get anywhere in a hurry. Some of them also have dividers all the way up the middle, so if you want to make a left turn, you have to go to the end of the street, enter a roundabout and then drive back to where you want to go on the other side of the street. Some of the crosswalk signs here have a little man who actually looks like he is walking. His legs move when you are allowed to cross, and when it gets towards the end of the time, he runs really fast. Typical Spaniard: typical Spaniards are shorter than I am dark-complected and have very large noses. They also all speak in the same nasally voice. We will always here our host dad talking behind us and then turn around just to find some random man. They really all sound exactly the same. They also all say the world ¨Vale¨ about 100 times per sentance. Chocolate: Spaniards are obsessed with chocolate. Everything has chocolate in it. My favorite is the granola cereal we eat every morning that contains milk and dark chocolate flakes. Cereal boxes: all of the cereal boxes here are obsessed with telling you how healthy they are and all the reasons why you should eat them. But, in my experience, Spaniards don´t really seem to care that much about their health because the only things they seem to like doing are smoking, drinking, and driving recklessly. Cigarette cartons: all of the cigarette boxes here are printed with giant warnings that you can read from about 10 feet away. Common ones are ¨Smoking can kill,¨ ¨Smoking causes impotence and lowers sperm count,¨ and my favorite, the one I wish everyone would consider, is ¨Smoking greatly endangers your health and the health of those around you.¨ There is a sucker company I have seen that makes fun of this. The box is shaped kind of like a cigarette box and has ¨Sucking can´t kill¨ printed on it just like the cigarette warnings. It cracks me up. Ice cream: They have ice cream/candy/pop stands here about every twenty feet. Just stick your hands out in both directions and you are sure to hit one. Siesta: Spaniards have a siesta from 2 to 5 every day. Stores are usally closed at this time. This is very frustrating because most stores open at 10 to 12 in the morning and close at 7 so it is basically impossible to buy anything. Things are open longer hours in Madrid, but here in Alcala I have no idea how stores stay in business. One day, I was craving a bacon egg an cheese buscuit so I wandered into McDonalds at 10:30 in the morning. The man told me to leave and said that they didn´t open until 12. I was really sad to be thwarted by one of the most American institutions every. You should be able to rely on McDonalds! Even if it is mediocrity it is familiar mediocrity! Milk: milk here comes in boxes and doesn´t need to be refrigerated. It really sucks having warm milk on your cereal every day. Couples: Spanish couples are rediculously overly-demonstrative. They will make out and grope in public without the slightest bit of shame. Once I saw a girl on the bus trying to give her boyfriend a hicky. Every morning we ride the bus to school with a couple of 16 year old that are almost constantly making out. I´m guessing they have a pretty high teenage pregnancy rate here. Nuns: they have nuns everywhere here. Once, I asked one for directions and she grabbed ahold of my arm. She told me I was pretty like the virgen and kept kissing me on the cheeks. I was really happy when another nun drove by to pick her up because I´m pretty sure she was trying to kidnap me and force me into the convent. Ants: we have an ant infestation in our kitchen. Someone in the house likes to kill them, but then doesn´t clean them up. Yesterday I walked down to breakfast and the table was littered with mooshed ant corpses. But on the bright side, our family has finally started covering our food when they leave it on the counter! Every cloud has a silver lining.
Well, I´m exhausted so I am going to bed. See you all very soon!
Gianna
martes, 5 de junio de 2007
Hello all!
This is just a quick note of apology and explanation. Some of you have sent me e-mails and I haven´t been very prompt about answering them. I am getting to them, but the blog is very time intensive and I have just passed a very stressful workload in my classes here, so time has been scarce. I haven´t forgotten you! Don´t worry! So, thank you very much for writing and you can all expect responses very soon.
Love you all and see you soon!
Gianna
This is just a quick note of apology and explanation. Some of you have sent me e-mails and I haven´t been very prompt about answering them. I am getting to them, but the blog is very time intensive and I have just passed a very stressful workload in my classes here, so time has been scarce. I haven´t forgotten you! Don´t worry! So, thank you very much for writing and you can all expect responses very soon.
Love you all and see you soon!
Gianna
viernes, 1 de junio de 2007
Once again, it´s picture time!
Hey everyone! Things have been kind of quiet around here since our trip got canceled last week. But we went traveling again and saw a lot more interesting sights. We started out by going to Segovia. We saw some beautiful old churches, Ferdinand and Isabella´s palace, and a Roman aqueduct, and I got pooped on by a pigeon! It was really exciting! Actually I got pretty lucky because the pigeon pooped on the girl next to me and only a little of it splattered on me. I felt pretty bad for her because there was so much that she had to buy a new shirt. There are a ridiculous amount of birds in Europe and you´d be surprised how often an occurrence this really is. Other interesting events in Segovia was getting yelled at by the locals. We really attract a lot of attention, especially in smaller towns. As we were walking to the palace a boy was yelling all the English swear words he knew at me to get my attention, and another boy yelled at my friend to take off her clothes. I really don´t understand these tactics. What do they intend to accomplish? I really have no idea.Next we made our way to Salamanca. We went to the nunnery and sang hymns in the nuns´chorus to hear the acoustics. The nuns there are cloistered so they don´t see people and they barely even talk to each other. I´m still trying to figure out how they earn a living in there. Maybe admissions to see the church. Some cloistered nuns sell cookies or nuts through this intercom system so they don´t actually see you, but I still don´t see how that could support them all. Anyway, after that we went to a church that was actually two churches built almost on top of each other, but just in different styles. Then we went to the famous University of Salamanca and read some poetry, and then we got free time to explore the city. That night we went down to an old roman bridge that was discussed in one of the 16th novels we read for class and reread the portion that occurred on the bridge. Pretty fun!
Today we got up and wandered around for awhile before we head back for Alcala. We stopped in Avila (that is where I am in the picture) to see the last fully walled city in Spain. If you look closely you can see that I bought a University of Salamanca sweatshirt out of desperation because it was freezing there. When we got here the weather was unbearably hot, but then it went through this rainy/cold phase and the only thing I brought with me was a very thin zip up. But now that I actually have something warm it will become stiflingly hot again. Okay, I´m boring so I´ll move on to the pictures. Oh, and I was experimenting with different picture layouts, and it didn´t exactly turn out that great, so sorry for the awkward organization.
This picture is actually taken in the same place where we took the Avila picture. I´m not sure
exactly what this is, but it was really beautiful so I thought I´d share.
This is in the Palace of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was full of suits of armor and they even had models of horses and riders decked out in their battle gear. I´ve just realized that the feet of the armor in this picture don´t show, but their shoes are metal but the toes are really long and pointy. Referring to the pointy-toed shoes that are in style right now, our director said, ¨You can see that their footwear is actually quite modern.¨ It was pretty funny.
In case you were wondering, I haven´t recently become a giant, 7-foot-tall Amazon. Spanish people are actually pretty short, but that doesn´t even compare to how short they used to be. All the inner doors in this nunnery were no more that 6 feet high.
Many old buildings here are covered with a ridiculous amount beautifully detailed carvings. The weather can be pretty extreme and sometimes they´ll use materials as weak as plaster, so a lot of modern restoration goes on so as to not lose completely the building´s facade. When the restorations occur, the artesans sometimes include modern details to record the time period in which the work was restored. Our director asked us if we saw anything in the facade that wasn´t supposed to be there, but the carvings, like the one on the left, are only a little bigger than a hand, so we didn´t see anything strange
at first. Then, I noticed this little beast for his sheer 
creepiness. As I looked closer to examine him, I
creepiness. As I looked closer to examine him, I realized he just happened to be eating an ice cream cone, two scoops.
I then looked up a little ways and was even more surprised to find this guy. They defininitely didn´t have space suits back then. They like to include all sorts of weird stull like this in the decorations. A different facade was decorated with a lot of skull carvings and one of then had a frog on its head. In Salamanca, a frog is a sign of luck, so if you see the frog skull, you´ll have luck all year. All of the tourists shops have little skull and frog figurines in case you want to bring some luck home with you.
And speaking of luck, in the church we went to there, they have a very interesting custom for bringing luck. There is an ancient tradition that seniors at the University of Salamanca would perform to prepare for their final exams. They simply go to the cript of a specific bishop--all cripts have lifesize carvings of the deceased lying asleep over their coffin--and touch the carving of the bishop´s feet. You can touch with your hands or your feet, the luck comes either way. They would even do these quiz sessions where the student would sit touching the feet, and all of their professors would stand around asking questions while knowledge flowed into them from the dead bishop´s casket. Then, if they passed their exams, they got to write their name on the outside wall in bull´s blood. You can still see a lot of names written on the university walls. It´s really weird, I know.
This is a walk-up window at a McDonald´s in Madrid.
There is a certain street in Madrid where they have what is called a book fair. They whole thing is lined with kiosks buying and selling books. Some of them are really old and kind of odd. But we did find something familiar. If you look at the dark blue book in the center you will see that it is a Spanish Book of Mormon. We were just passing random tables and we saw it laying out there with all of the other books. We looked inside and it was obvious that someone had been using it for missionary work. There was a picture of the family who had given it, along with their names and their testimony. They also had written prayer instructions, all in spanish. I have no idea how long this place has had it because the book was the pre-footnote edition and all of the family members had some majorly horrendous big hair and their clothes looked like they were from at least 1975. I´m really tempted to go back and buy it.
This was our dinner one night. It still had eyes, legs, antennae, and a tail. Thankfully, our host mom knows I don´t like seafood and only made me eat one. This is how it happened: she first shows us how to remove the head, tail, legs, and shell and puts them on our plates. I tried to avoid looking it in the eyes while I ate my dinner, but it was impossible to completely avoid looking at it because its atennae were so long that they stretched across my entire plate. My roommate like seafood so she started to eat one. As she pulled off the head, she squeezed too hard and its brown liquid brain oozed out everywhere. I was horrified. I waited until it was the only thing left to eat on my plate before I began the process. I used a napkin to pull off the head to control any brain leakage, and I just got really grossed out by touching it. Then I pulled off the tail and discovered another brown liquid that looked suspiciously like excrement, so I squeezed that out and wiped in on my napkin. There is only about two small bites once you take everything off that is inedible, so I just popped in the whole thing because I knew once I´d finished the first bite, I probably wouldn´t be able to take another. I chewed it on the side of my mouth so I could taste as little as possible and then tried to swallow the whole thing at once, which made me gag, but I eventually got it down. My host mom asked how I liked it, but saw my uncomfortable smile and knew I hadn´t. I said, ¨It had eyes.¨ ¨Well, so do cows.¨ ¨But they aren´t on my plate.¨ She laughed again and that was the end of dinner, and hopefully, of seafood.
This is one of the Barbies from the exhibit I went to. It is supposed to be Queen Elizabeth.
Apparently, after the U.S., Spain is the second highest country for immigration, which means they also have an extremely large amount of illegal immigrants. The African border is really close, so people come from there, but also South America and all over Europe. It seems to me that U.S. politicians try to be pretty tactful when they talk about it and not take a stance that will greatly offend people. They don´t really believe in that here. This is one of two anti illegal immigration posters that are plastered everywhere around the city. This one says: Don´t be an ostrich. When facing illegal immigration you shouldn´t hide your head. The other one says: Not even one more. They are sponsered by a group called ¨Habitable Alcala.¨ I really don´t think people would even try to get away with that in the states.
Mmmmm, kelp soup! And by ¨mmmmm,¨ I mean really weird with awkward texture and completely without flavor. You can even see it hanging off of our spoons. Spanish food leaves much to be desired, it can´t wait for Italy.
Wow that was really long and hopefully I didn´t bore you all. This trip is just slipping by so fast, pretty soon I´ll be home to tell you guys what I did in person. I hope everyone is well!
Gianna
miércoles, 30 de mayo de 2007
Monday night almost our entire group was going to a bullfight. I was never interested in going but all of my friends were, and I didn´t want to have nothing to do. I´d just heard how bloody and gruesome they are and that just isn´t my thing. A guy in the group said, ¨Come on! It´s the culture, you have to experience it!¨ To which I replied ¨Smoking and drinking are a part of the culture, too, and I´m not taking part in that either.¨ I teetered on the fence, but then I went to a museum instead...only to find that all museums in Europe are closed on Monday. Major bummer. But I´m not sad I didn´t go. Then I went home and had Family Home Evening at our director´s house. They had made us chocolate chip cookies and popcorn and we were all so desperate for American food that we made ourselve sick hogging it down. We got home and our dinner was on the table, but we had to ask to eat it for lunch the next day because we were too full. But actually, we only ended up eating a third of it, because the other portion was this fatty caserole that had been sitting on the counter uncovered for at least 36 hours and I had no interest in eating microbes, so we wrapped it in the foil that had covered our food and chucked it.
We got our first papers back yesterday for our classes. Very interesting. In our first class, history and culture, she handed back our homework and everyone had gotten B´s!!! Being the overachievers that we are, my girlfriends and I were freaking out. She can´t give us all B´s! We did exactly what she said! Etc. Etc. She finally said that B meant Bien, and our fears were calmed. We´re just hoping that we weren´t supposed to be getting an E for Excellente. Then we got our first grades in our second class. This guy is totally crazy. He read all of our grades aloud to the class. Embarrassing, especially since he had not graded as easily as he said he would. Today, he actually passed back our papers and he told everyone what they did wrong, in front of the whole class one by one. He would read a section, tells us he didn´t understand what we meant and then ask us to explain it. Then he would tell us we were wrong and pull some obscure term out of his butt to explain what we should have done. He seriously expects us to know a ton about Spanish literature, but we´ve only studied it a semester, and he is a terrible teacher so we won´t learn a thing more from him. We all enjoy berating him on the bus home.
Later on, my neighbor Melissa said the bull fight was really cool and not that violent. But then Leslie described how one had vomited blood and other such disgusting details and I was one again pleased that I hadn´t been there. Most people went just to say they went, and I don´t need the bragging rights that badly. Today was really cool though, because we went to a flamenco ballet in Madrid! The theatre was pretty small and we were really close to the stage, so we saw everything maybe a little too well. Don´t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but it wasn´t the most spectacular thing. The dancers kept messing up and talking to each other on stage. There was this one heavier dancer that was always so dripping in sweat that it would fly off of him in drops when he did turns and soak through all of his costume shirts. He also liked to keep his shirt open to display his ¨impressive¨ amount of chest hair. There was another male dancer that we were pretty sure was really a teenage girl. His/her looks really could have gone either way and they always kept their shirt all the way buttoned when all the other guy dancers would have them completely open. They had some amazing flamenco guitarrist play during breaks and sometimes while the dancers performed, which was really cool. But the best part was this 65 year old lady dancer with a tremendous ego. We think she was their choreographer and that she only agreed to do it if she could perform. She would come out on stage in a racy costume and dance some highly excitable number. Her face was intense, she would stare at the audience, yell and stamp her feet. Total diva. She kept making eyes and beckoning to one of the guys in our group. She danced three times and she would take extra bows and wave her hands to encourage more applause, then when we gave them to her, she would get this immensely self-satified look on her face in an, ¨I´ve still got it after all these years,¨ kind of way. She killed me.
One last note before I head off to the bus stop. To all of you who are worried about Ricardo, don´t. He really isn´t that bad. I mean, I´m not exaggerating his behavior, but it is laughable and therefore tolerable. Yeah it would be better if he was completely nice and reliable, but I´m having fun and whatever weird stuff he does just gives me an interesting story. He isn´t ruining my trip or stressing me out or anything like that. Besides, he has been in the hospital for about a week now, I think it has something to do with his liver, so when he gets back he´ll probably be resting and not around very much. Sorry to worry you all! I´ll write again soon.
We got our first papers back yesterday for our classes. Very interesting. In our first class, history and culture, she handed back our homework and everyone had gotten B´s!!! Being the overachievers that we are, my girlfriends and I were freaking out. She can´t give us all B´s! We did exactly what she said! Etc. Etc. She finally said that B meant Bien, and our fears were calmed. We´re just hoping that we weren´t supposed to be getting an E for Excellente. Then we got our first grades in our second class. This guy is totally crazy. He read all of our grades aloud to the class. Embarrassing, especially since he had not graded as easily as he said he would. Today, he actually passed back our papers and he told everyone what they did wrong, in front of the whole class one by one. He would read a section, tells us he didn´t understand what we meant and then ask us to explain it. Then he would tell us we were wrong and pull some obscure term out of his butt to explain what we should have done. He seriously expects us to know a ton about Spanish literature, but we´ve only studied it a semester, and he is a terrible teacher so we won´t learn a thing more from him. We all enjoy berating him on the bus home.
Later on, my neighbor Melissa said the bull fight was really cool and not that violent. But then Leslie described how one had vomited blood and other such disgusting details and I was one again pleased that I hadn´t been there. Most people went just to say they went, and I don´t need the bragging rights that badly. Today was really cool though, because we went to a flamenco ballet in Madrid! The theatre was pretty small and we were really close to the stage, so we saw everything maybe a little too well. Don´t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but it wasn´t the most spectacular thing. The dancers kept messing up and talking to each other on stage. There was this one heavier dancer that was always so dripping in sweat that it would fly off of him in drops when he did turns and soak through all of his costume shirts. He also liked to keep his shirt open to display his ¨impressive¨ amount of chest hair. There was another male dancer that we were pretty sure was really a teenage girl. His/her looks really could have gone either way and they always kept their shirt all the way buttoned when all the other guy dancers would have them completely open. They had some amazing flamenco guitarrist play during breaks and sometimes while the dancers performed, which was really cool. But the best part was this 65 year old lady dancer with a tremendous ego. We think she was their choreographer and that she only agreed to do it if she could perform. She would come out on stage in a racy costume and dance some highly excitable number. Her face was intense, she would stare at the audience, yell and stamp her feet. Total diva. She kept making eyes and beckoning to one of the guys in our group. She danced three times and she would take extra bows and wave her hands to encourage more applause, then when we gave them to her, she would get this immensely self-satified look on her face in an, ¨I´ve still got it after all these years,¨ kind of way. She killed me.
One last note before I head off to the bus stop. To all of you who are worried about Ricardo, don´t. He really isn´t that bad. I mean, I´m not exaggerating his behavior, but it is laughable and therefore tolerable. Yeah it would be better if he was completely nice and reliable, but I´m having fun and whatever weird stuff he does just gives me an interesting story. He isn´t ruining my trip or stressing me out or anything like that. Besides, he has been in the hospital for about a week now, I think it has something to do with his liver, so when he gets back he´ll probably be resting and not around very much. Sorry to worry you all! I´ll write again soon.
sábado, 26 de mayo de 2007
Welcome to Lisbon, would you like to buy some illicit drugs?
I wrote this about a week ago and just now published it, sorry for being behind, but I put up three posts today to make up for it. It is raining here and I am so pleased about it. When we were preparing to go to Lisbon they told us it would be cold and windy because it is so close to the ocean, so I packed warm. Big mistake! Lisbon was at least 85 degrees and I was dying of heat! I´ve been sticky and hot for the past three days. And Alcala isn´t much better. Once we got off the tour bus we had to walk ten minutes to the plaza where the internet cafe is, carrying all of our bags from the trip, and sweating like crazy. It is terrible. But it was okay that we were hot because Lisbon, or as they call it Lisboa was so beautiful! I don´t know if it was becaue we were in their capital, but it seemed a lot nicer than Spain. Cleaner, less grafitti, just overall better. And everybody there speaks English! It was so nice, because we definitely don´t speak Portuguese. There was one thing that was way worse though, and that was the people who prey on tourists. They are a lot more common and more bold in Lisboa. Wherever we´d go, there would be a gypsy woman selling scarves, some creepy guy pushing sunglasses, old women shoving fans in your face, all of then yelling and approaching you to buy things. It was TERRIBLE when we went out to have free time. I guess we were in a fairly touristy area because there were people trying to get your money everywhere. We were sitting in an outdoor cafe, and every so often gypsies would pass by and hold out a cup for donations. One time they did it in teams. A man with sunglasses and a woman with a donation cup passed on each side of the tables at the same time. These women cracked me up because most of the time, people have a gimmick to get your money. They sell you sunglasses, play the guitar, are horribly crippled in some way, or they even steal it, but these ladies had nothing. They didn´t even try to inspire sympathy by wheeling by in a wheelchair or wearing dirty tattered clothes, they just expected us to hand over our money because they shoved a cup in our faces as they walked by. They didn´t even hang around annoyingly so we would pay them to go away. I guess they wouldn´t do it if it wasn´t profitable, but I never saw anyone give them money. There was this other guy with a recorder that was pretty terrible too. He would wander around playing, but when people passed him, he would stop playing so he could follow them and harrass them. And he had long scraggly hair and was really dirty, so he wasn´t the kind of guy you´d feel comfortable approaching you. He would have done much better to sit and play. There were also a lot of hobos in this area, but they were surprisingly unenthusiatic. They just laid around listlessly on the steps of this old cathedral and didn´t even try. They looked kind of asleep, but I was trying to avoid all eye contact so I couldn´t be sure. We did see a really cool street performer though. We were walking down the street, and if there hadn´t been people gathered around him, we never would have seen him. He was standing in the middle of the street on a podium and he was painting and dressed like an old-fashioned bronze statue that had greened with age. He would stand perfectly still and then bow to whoever gave him coins. We were so intrigued that we staid to watch him for about 15 minutes at least. His eyes are closed when he waits for money, but he obviously noticed us all standing their giggling, so he would often smile or look at us after he had bowed to whoever had paid him. I gave him 5 centavos for his efforts, but people were giving him money left and right, so I´m sure he made it out fine. Oh, I almost forgot! Not only would people walk up to to sell normal things like sunglasses, t-shirts, fans, etc, but there was also a fair amount of people selling cocaine! With no shame at all, they would offer it to you as you passed and they didn´t even try to hide it. You could see the drugs in their hand 15 feet before you passed them. They were pretty nicely dressed, too, so I guess the coke business is pretty lucrative. I wonder if it is illegal.
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