Blog 10

Friday March 21, 2008
Wow, I decided not to write in my journal for a couple days because there wasn’t all that much to write about and then suddenly it’s Friday and I haven’t written in almost a week! Well, on Monday there really wasn’t all that much that happened. Besides the normal stuff for Mondays, we had a birthday party for everyone who has had or is going to have a birthday during the study abroad. Emily got everyone to donate a euro and she bought galletas (which are basically graham cracker cookies with chocolate filling), pretzels, whipped cream, and a cake. It was so much fun, even Hermano Lopez came and had some. Afterwards, some of us stayed and played cards, and we played BS and a couple other games.
Tuesday was our last day of class before we got out for Semana Santa, and after Spanish I went and updated my blog all the way from Santiago with pictures and everything, and then I came home and went running. When I got back I decided to rest for a while, and I ended up sleeping for two hours! Brooke had gone into Madrid with some people, so after my nap I worked on some homework and then went to Keri’s and we watched “The Man From Snowy River”, she had never seen it, and that was the only movie we had at our disposal. When I got home, Brooke was still gone, but she got home a little after me and then we went and had dinner. Because it’s Semana Santa all the mercados closed down for the week and Madre bought everything in mass quantity; after dinner she was getting food in containers, and one of the things she was doing was cleaning calamari, and I asked if I could help. You have to break the bottom that has the eyes and tentacles off of the head, and then take out the spine and insides, and then peel off the skin. You eat the tentacles and the head without the skin and insides, both of which are really good. My hands smelled horrible afterwards though! It was fun, however, I don’t think I’m going to make a habit out of it. Then since Wednesday was Father’s Day in Spain, Brooke and I made a card for Padre, and it was awesome! The outside just said “Felíz Día de los Padres” and had a picture of a toro, and then on the inside we drew the whole family and wrote a letter to him. It really was a great card, and since we were going to be gone all day in Valencia we left it on the table for him the next morning. He hasn’t said anything about it, which is okay, he was actually in kind of a grumpy mood all day yesterday, so hopefully he won’t be today.
Then on Wednesday, we left Alcalá at about seven in the morning, and it was a four-hour drive to Valencia. I tried to sleep on the way, but my head kept flopping around. Once we got there, Lisa’s dad (Juan) had offered to show us around the city because that’s where he’s from. First of all, I could not believe how many people were there! All over the place there were the little tiendas on the sides of the street selling everything from wooden roses and soaps to clothes and jewelry and food. Oh the food…places to buy churros y chocolate and paella were everywhere. Paella comes from Valencia so that’s why it was so popular. Okay then, so the floats. When I heard “floats” I was thinking kind of like what we have in the states with an overly large Winnie the Pooh floating over the crowds or something, but no, that was not what they were. They are actually more like massive paper meché sculptures that are located all around the city and there’s only one in every spot by itself. The officials put metal fences around the fallas/floats to keep the crowds away and these come in really handy when they burn so no one gets hurt. So after we got off the bus we went to find a bathroom and the only place we could find right away was at the train station, and I tell you what I have never smelled a bathroom that smelled as bad as that one. I seriously thought I was going to be sick from the smell. Yuck. Well, after that we could either go to see Juan’s district of town or go see the fireworks by the train station. Little did we know that if you wanted a good spot for fireworks you have to get there sooner than 20 minutes beforehand and we had to fight our way to even get where we did, and we still couldn’t see anything where we ended up. I’m kind of an optimist-progressive person and I just wasn’t okay with standing there smushed in between all those people, and Missy and Cassie felt the same way so we determined to get out of the mob. I took the lead and they hooked on behind me. I never knew that all those days of fighting through the crowds in high school would come in so handy, but I just dived through people to get through the crowds. You had to push through people and seriously squeeze in between everyone. Most of them didn’t really do anything but one guy got really annoyed with me and elbowed me in the side as I was passing. Whatever, anyway after we finally got out of the crowd we decided to go to the market place to look at the tiendas. Missy got a wooden ring, Cassie got these really cool swirly wooden earrings, and I finally finished my souvenir shopping. Honestly, most of Wednesday was wandering around following someone else, and if I had to compare it to something I would say it’s like being at the State Fair for WAY too long. I’m not a big fan of the fair anyway so this was definitely not one of my favorite trips. After going to the market place we met back up at the train station, and we thought we were going to the beach, but I guess there was a breach with my source because we ended up just walking around to see more of the fallas. So after wandering around Valencia for about seven hours, I was really ready to just fall over. Plus, because of my souvenir buying, I had run out of money and I didn’t bring any credit cards for fear of pick-pockets (which still hasn’t happened to me, knock on wood). However, Christy didn’t want to eat all of her paella and I gave her the euro fifty that I did have leftover and we shared it, and then I had some crackers and an orange later to eat. Finally, after everyone had had a sufficient meal and bathroom break we went to go get spots for our falla of choice. Ours was with this huge genie, panther, and other related objects. One thing about the fallas, most of them were really bizarre and risqué if I do say so myself. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say they were weird. Anyway, we got to the falla at about nine, and it was set to light at one. Yes, we waited four hours to see this thing burn. In the meantime, there wasn’t much we could do except wait, I had a book so I read for a while, but we ended up talking most of the time. At one point while I was sitting down, this little girl started talking to me in Spanish (her name was Gabriella but she goes by Gaby and is six) and we were chatting about the fallas when her mom leaned down and asked me if I was from Australia in English. Well, it turns out they are from Brazil and the mom’s family lives in Spain so they were visiting, and the mom has been trying to learn English for a couple of years now and Gaby is starting to learn too. The mom told me that the little girl was talking to me in Portuguese, but it didn’t really sound that different from Spanish. The mom also said that Brazilian Portuguese is much smoother and prettier than Portugal Portuguese, so that may have been why it was easy to understand Gaby. The mom said that she had been trying to understand us since she’s trying to learn English but that we talked to fast for her to understand most of the time, which is funny because that’s how it is for us in Spanish. Anyway, we talked for about an hour, but when she found out the falla wasn’t going to start until one, she and Gaby decided to leave. It was so cold anyway so I wasn’t surprised that they decided to leave. Finally at one they started it off by setting off a ton of fireworks like we do for the Fourth of July, and because we were right in front you could feel it rumbling and pulsing through the ground. Then what they do to set the falla on fire (haha) is they have attached wires all over it and they light the whole thing up at once. Now, I thought maybe it wouldn’t really do much, but when they say it’s going to burn, they really mean it’s going to burn. We were a good two hundred and fifty feet away but once it started burning, you could feel the heat as if it was right next to you. The fire and smoke went above the buildings and the whole time there was fire fighters on hand if anything went amiss. Also, at one point during the night within about ten minutes, we saw ten people go by on stretchers who had passed out from being so drunk. It was so bad, that’s why I say it was like the fair, with the mobs, the drunks…everything reminded me of the fair. Well, after about a half hour, it was pretty much done, and we were supposed to leave at 3a.m. so we just kind of moved into the crowd like we were herding cattle-sardines, made a bathroom stop and then headed back to the train station to wait until it was time to meet at our meeting spot. It’s incredible how much pain you can be in from just walking around all day; my feet were so sore and I was kind of limping because it hurt so badly. Everyone was really sore though, so I wasn’t the only one. We actually didn’t end up leaving until a little after three because we were missing people, but once we got on the road, I didn’t have any problem sleeping and the only time I woke up was to go to the bathroom halfway. When I went in the gas station, after I went to the bathroom, I decided to stretch my legs by walking around the store inside, but then I couldn’t figure out how to get out, which may have been from lack of sleep. You go in through a revolving gate, but it doesn’t go the other way, so I ended up just pushing my way through because I was too tired to find some other way.
When we finally got into Alcalá, it was about 7:30a.m., and the sun was just coming up. It was absolutely beautiful with the pink, red, and orange, and I’m pretty sure I’m about the only one on our bus (besides Fernando the bus driver) who saw it. When we got off the bus, I was so cold I just wanted to get home as fast as possible, but Brooke wanted to see what everyone was doing later, so I left without her. I was just too cold to wait, but she caught up to me a few minutes later. When we got home we had a snack, and then changed and went straight to bed. I didn’t bother setting an alarm, and we slept straight through from 8a.m. until one thirty. After we woke up we showered and had the most yummy lunch! It was caballa which is mackerel with potatoes, sopa de mariscos, and for postre we had a Semana Santa specialty. They are called torrijas, and they are actually like French toast, except they are covered in cinnamon and sugar, and are made from slices of French bread dipped in milk and eggs and then fried before putting on the cinnamon and sugar. After this, you put some of the milk mixture over it and you are supposed to eat it cold. It’s amazing, and I love them so much. They know I love them too, so it’s kind of funny. So after lunch we decided to go into Madrid to see the procession, but beforehand we went to this free museum which was okay, but it didn’t really have that much just some modern art (blah) and religious paintings. The procession we went to was by the Plaza Mayor, and it’s definitely not like the parades in the states. From Angelica, we learned that the processions Wednesday through Friday are focused on the death of Christ and are sullen and somber, and then Saturday and Sunday are dedicated to the Resurrection and are more festive. Well, she was right, that’s exactly how it was last night, and it was actually kind of creepy I thought. The people where the long cloaks like the Catholic priests do, only purple, and they were wearing the pointed hats that look like the KKK. Some of them were walking barefoot and carrying person-sized crosses, and I even saw one who was wearing chains on their ankles. There was also a large group of women dressed all in black like a widow would be who’s in mourning, and there was several idol looking Christuses. It’s definitely not a time for messing around and no one was talking really, and some people were crying. Because our religion doesn’t really focus on the death of Christ it was weird for us to see, and we don’t really understand it, but it was interesting for sure. Anyway, the procession moved really slow and because it was so slow, we left around ten to get home in time. The metro was a nightmare going there but not to bad on the way back so that was nice. Nothing exciting when we got home and nothing today so far, Brooke’s going to Madrid and I’m going to the procession in Alcalá. Everyone was still asleep when we woke up at nine, it’s 11a.m. now and I think Javi is in the shower. I think they sleep in since everything is closed so they don’t have to get up for anything special.

Saturday March 22, 2008
Yesterday after I went running and ate potaje and fish for lunch, I left to go see if anyone was in the Plaza de Cervantes for the procession. There wasn’t anyone there when I got there, so I waited a while and then ended up finding Callie and her parents’ friend Danny and then we waited around for the others to show up. The procession didn’t even come around the Plaza until about nine and it was about the same as last night in Madrid. We didn’t stick around long, but right before we decided to leave, this guy that was behind us asked us why a bunch of Americans were at the procession in Alcalá. It turns out that this guy was from Arizona and served in the Air Force in Spain back in the day, and then met a Spaniard, got married, and has been living in Spain since 1990. But now he has kids who are living in Spain with their spouses and grandkids here, so it would be really hard to leave and go back to the states, but he said that he would like to someday. He was stationed at Hill Air Force base for some time and I mentioned Grandpa Brooks to see if he recognized the name, and he said that it sounded familiar but couldn’t remember for sure. Once we got home, Padre’s family was here, but Brooke and I kind of got the feeling that they were having a private conversation so we ate in the kitchen with just us two. After dinner, there were these pastelitos that Madre told us we could have some of, and those were yummy but they were drier than the cookies that we are used to from the states. Actually there was this one that was really soft and fluffy like Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies are, and Brooke and I both really liked that one. After swapping some photos, Brooke went to bed and I went to so put my bottle in the fridge and Madre was eating the cookies like it was the end of the world when I walked in and then she apologized about dinner, it was just as we thought, but everything is fine.
Later…Oh my goodness, today was so much fun, and we didn’t really even do that much. I was up really late last night (2:30a.m.) looking at pictures, and that always makes me lose track of the time. So I ended up sleeping in until about 10:30a.m. and then I caught up on my notes for History 202 and figured out my classes for the next two years. Anyway, after that exciting task, Brooke got back from going into town and we went to go buy food for Barcelona after lunch. (We had spaghetti for lunch by the way.) Then after a short siesta, and bundling up for the cold, we went into Madrid. It had been raining, so it was definitely one of those days that you would rather be inside reading a book with a cup of hot chocolate and a blanket wrapped around you, or making cookies with a favorite movie playing in the background. But it was okay, and we met up with four other girls so that was fun. Kait and I talked the whole way into Madrid, and once we got there it was raining its butt off so Kait and I shared my umbrella. I didn’t mind the rain too much, and it wasn’t all that cold so it was nice to walk around just talking in the rain. Some of the girls had to do some souvenir shopping and there’s this store called “The Toledano” that has a bunch of stuff that is supposedly from Toledo. I’m really glad I bought all my stuff beforehand, it’s so much cooler, but it was fun to see what everyone else was buying. Brooke got some earrings for her sisters, and Kait got a ring for one of her sisters. After that we went to the Puerta de Sol because some people wanted napolitanas, and so we did that, which is the ritual now. I didn’t get one, but I had a bite from Tina, and Kait got a palmera with this sweet glaze on the top and kind of a lemon taste and that was good too. Then, Rachel McDonald told Tina about this little old English used book store, and so we went and found that. It’s down this street that you would never go out to find on your own anyway, but I guess Dr. Shumway told Rachel about it. They had all kinds of books that I wanted to buy, but there’s no way I could have bought them or brought them home, so I didn’t. However, because I’m all done with all my homework and even ahead in some cases, I was hoping to find a cheap read for Barcelona. Well, it just so happened that I found “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown for one euro! I have been wanting to read that since my junior year in high school, so now I have something to keep me occupied on the trip and I can’t wait to read it! I’ll just sit on the beach reading my book and eating my Muesli crunch cereal, ah yes this is the life.
So after we got back from Madrid I dropped by an ATM to get some money real quick and then we ran into Dr. Shumway and Ricky on the way home so we stopped and talked to them for a minute, and then we got home to shower and had leftover spaghetti for dinner (and torrijas for postre, yay!). It was just me and Brooke again for dinner and we ended up playing kind of a game that was really fun. We compared opposites of things like “brownies or cake” or “crunchy or smooth peanut butter” to see which one each of us liked. After lunch earlier when we were talking to Madre I mentioned that I noticed we only have 20 days left, and she got kind of sad. It’s true, I’m going to miss Spain so much, and it’s gone by so fast, it’s unbelievable, but I definitely don’t regret any bit of it!

Sunday March 23, 2008
This morning started out kind of bumpy since we had to run to catch the bus, but other than that it’s been a pretty decent day. Before we left for church, we ate breakfast like usual (I had toast with cream cheese and apricot jam, so good) and I realized how much I’ve come to like Abuela. After getting to know her a little bit better this week since she’s been staying with us I can see where Madre gets her little quirks from. Every day, Abuela comes to the door with us when we’re leaving and makes sure we have coats, umbrellas, and anything else we might need for the time that we’ll be gone. She always asks where we’re going and how long we’re going to be gone and that kind of thing, and she’s just really cute. But today when we were leaving for church I didn’t have my sweater on but I had it in my arm and Abuela was talking to me and she said to close the door and put my sweater on before I left. Well, as soon as Madre heard what Abuela was telling me, she came running over and made me shut the door so I could put the sweater on. She just about put it on for me, and once we got outside it wasn’t even cold so I took it off. It’s just funny to me that they are both so motherly about that kind of stuff.
Anyway, today at church Dr. Shumway was one of the speakers in Sacrament meeting and the other one was Beatrix from Puerto Rico who has the daughter Samira. I liked both of their talks, but the one by Beatrix was especially good I thought. Obviously the theme was Easter since that’s what today is, and Beatrix was talking about the customs that we are seeing right now in Spain due to Semana Santa. One of the huge differences between our religion and others is the focus on the cross and how we don’t have that symbol in our churches. Beatriz put it very nicely: “No tenemos una cruz porque Dios vive y no está muerto. Nuestras vidas tienen sentido a Dios; el dolor es temporal y va a pasar.” In other words, we have the knowledge that Christ rose from the grave and is no longer dead, so we don’t focus on the death of Christ. We know that he suffered to take away not only our sins, but also our pain, and so we need to keep that in mind during this time. Dr. Shumway’s talk was mostly a history of him and his family and a little bit of how he gained a testimony of everything up to this point, but my favorite part of his talk was when he mentioned John H. Groberg and the Tongan people who “no tienen nada, pero tienen todo” (had nothing, but had everything) because they had the Gospel. I think that we tend to take the Church for granted sometimes because we are used to having the knowledge of the truth and we forget that there are still those in the world who don’t know about the truthfulness of the Gospel. Look at the people celebrating the processions, they understand that Christ died and was resurrected, but they don’t believe that everyone will be resurrected and so it doesn’t have the same significance for them as it does for us. I don’t know, it just makes you look at the big picture.
After church we got home and lunch was already ready for us. I guess a friend of Padre’s passed away and so he and Madre were away at the funeral, so it was just us and Raquel and Abuela, but they were waiting to eat until later so only me and Brooke ate. I didn’t realize this until today, but during Semana Santa we didn’t eat any meat, only fish and today we had cocido which has meat in it (pork and chicken and the garbanzo beans). Brooke pointed it out that Madre explained the other day that potaje is typical of Semana Santa because it doesn’t have any meat in it and so it’s more popular and then you have cocido after it ends to signify the change. Interesting. So that was yummy, and then since no one was home for Easter, we decided to go to the Prado since we still hadn’t seen everything and we thought that that was a fulfilling Sunday activity so now I’m done with the Prado and I’ve seen it all. One thing real quick, Easter/holidays are not nearly as commercialized here as they are in the states. You see chocolate bunnies every once in a while in the stores here in Spain, but in the States, that’s what Easter is all about is the goodies and the Easter bunny and people tend to forget the real reason you are celebrating Easter. We figured that our family would be having a large meal today because of Pascua/Easter, but when we got home, like I said there wasn’t really anyone home. We also asked Raquel about it and she said the same thing, that Easter/holidays really aren’t all that big a deal here in Spain. So yet again…another difference between Spain and American culture.
Well, that’s about all I think, tomorrow is Monday again and it will for sure be busy especially because I have to pack for Barcelona (poor me huh?). Hopefully the weather will be wonderful so I can play on the beach!!