Barcelona y Sitges para Carnaval!

Day 54- 2/25

Last weekend some of my friends and I went to Sitges, Spain to celebrate Carnaval. It is the Spain/Europe version of Mardi Gras. It's a long weekend to celebrate (as in get all your partying out of your system) before lent begins on Fat Tuesday.

We flew from Valladolid right to Barcelona and took the half an hour train ride to Sitges. It is a small village right on the coast of the Mediterranean---Beautiful!!


My first time walking up into an airplane like this, exciting! 

The whole area of Catalonia was filled with French, Spanish, Catalan (technically a dialect of Spanish, but they would really rather be their own country), and English! British English of course, so we enjoyed some of the interesting translations.

We got there right when the sun was setting. Here's a panoramic of the beach!

There were a lot of huge sandcastles that people made trying to make some money on the boardwalk.

We went out the first night for Carnaval. We saw a lot of interesting costumes. Drag is very popular.

The next day we went back into Barcelona and visited the houses of Antoni Gaudi, he was a Spanish-Catalan modern arquitecture.

We went to his cathedral, the Sagrada Familia. He started building it in 1882, died in 1923 and it is still being constructed. It was supposed to be done this year but because of the economical crisis it is being postponed until 2015.

Front. The steeples on top keep getting added to so it keeps getting taller!

Here's a picture of vault on the inside. I didn't go in it because the line was extremely long and I think I would have had I studied his architecture more in school. But the outside was amazing!

             

Here's the back across the pond. This is more of the original structure.

   

 Then we walked around Park Guell. It is another one of Gaudi's works.

 

This is all carved out of the side of the hill!

He did a lot of ceramic tile designs. And a lot with lizards.

 Climbed all the way up to the crosses! Good view of Barca!

More of his buildings. Kinda looks like Willy Wonka!

 Then we returned to Sitges for the Carnaval parades that went from 8pm to supposedly 6am. We spent our last day on the beach! Not warm enough to lay out but very pretty!

  

I guess someone partied too hard? Hahaha.

 Panoramic of the Mediterranean! 

Provincia de Valladolid

Day 41 - 2/12

Yesterday we had an excursion around the province of Valladolid. Spain is divided into autonomous communities (like 12 or something?) We live in Castilla y Leon and then those have provinces. There's like 50 provinces in Spain and ours is called Valladolid, as well as the city I live in.

The first place we went to was Villa Romana de Almenara. It is basically in the middle of nowhere and there are ruins from a Roman village. There's a roof over them now and it's a museum. It was cool but a lot of the artifacts in the museum were replicas and there was a recreation of what the village used to look like.

The artifacts were from around the 3rd century.

 Reproduction of people finding the ruins

Floor of a room. A "villa" is like a big mansion that the whole small town lives in, besides the slaves they live on the outskirts.

Me in the "R"! First one to climb up!..And freak out before having to jump down.

 Jenny in the sign for Museo Villa Romana. 

Then we went to El Castillo Portillo. Alfonso X lived there in the 13th century.

 Climbed up a ton of stairs to the top of the tower.

Gretchen and I on top of the tower. It was sooo cold in the small towns since there are hardly any buildings and this one was on top of a hill.

 Looking down on the castle! (I finally figured out how to spell castle in English. Constantly switching between Spanish and English is killing my grammar in English and my spelling is going downhill too.)

 Rachel and Lindsey in the tunnel going down to the well. Three stories below ground!!

Me in the tunnel. I think I'm claustrophobic like Grandma Marshall. Definitely get dizzy and queazy going up or down on the staircases. 

 Then we went to Tordesillas. We went to a Chocolateria though and had awesome hot chocolate. It's like super thick melted chocolate with different flavors.
 Not much to see there but it is where the Tratado de Tordesillas (Treaty) was signed. After America was discovered the Reyes Catolicos and Portugal signed this agreement to separate the world into two parts. One for now Spain and the other for Portugal. This is why they speak Portuguese in Brazil. 

I think this is where it was signed? Not sure. It was another museum though.

This week was pretty exciting! I have been volunteering on Wednesdays and we made deviled eggs. Everyone here really liked them, but insisted on putting ketchup on them. I think they're gross either way.

Thursday Katie and I met up with Laura and Ines, two Spanish girls  studying at the University of Valladolid. We went out and practiced our Spanish and they practiced their English. We are going to go over to Ines' house sometime soon and she's going to teach us how to make "tortilla espanola." 

It's basically an omelet with eggs, potatoes and whatever else you want in it. But it's tough to get the texture down.

Then my roommate and I had an intercambio with my neighbor, Fernando, and his friend, Roberto (I met Fernando's mom in the elevator and she freaked that I was American and introduced me to them). We talked a lot about the health care system here and the economic crisis. It is interesting to hear how it is effecting them. A lot of young people here plan on learning English and moving to England or somewhere else in Europe and possibly the U.S. to get a job. 

Last night Erin and I played Nintendo DS with our Spanish mom's grandson, Marcos. We played Indiana Jones and Batman. It was really cool because he is only 4 so he can't read so we had to read the screen and explain to him in Spanish what he had to do to win. We also read him, El Mago de Oz (The Wizard of Oz). 

Today I went to a cafe with two girls in my class that are from Korea, Hyein and Dasom. It blows my mind that we can communicate with each other when neither of us know each other's first languages. We talked about everything. Everyone here is very interested in the United States (and they think we eat hamburgers and french fries for every meal) and I learned a lot about Korea. They have been here since August, lived with a family for two months, and now have Spanish roommates and live in an apartment until June. We talked about music and TV shows. They both have Ipads so whenever we couldn't understand each other they could pull up a picture online.

Successful week! Spoke a lotttt of Spanish.

I'm going to Barcelona and Sitges next weekend for Carnaval!! 

Intercambio!

Day 31- 2/2

This week and next have been exams. We have two semesters while we are here so these would be the "midterms" of the first semester. And we got a five page paper assigned on our entry tour in Madrid to write in the next few days. 

I've found that I'm learning a lot of words in English as well as Spanish. In my literature class I find myself translating some words to English, but then still having to look them up in an English dictionary. 

Katie, another UWSP student, and I started volunteering at a center for people with mental disabilities. We met a girl that volunteers there through school and she helped us set up a meeting with the director. Our first night was last night and every Wednesday we get to pick a recipe to make and the adults in the program help. Last night we made pancakes and lemonade (they wanted to make something "American"). A lot of the adults are able to communicate well and are pretty independent. There's also like ten volunteers there at a time so we get to speak A LOT of Spanish. Everyone was really nice and it was fun. I'm excited to go next week! 

Laura, the girl that introduced us to the program, is learning English. We hung out with her after the meeting the other night and it was so cool to talk to someone that has the same problems as us with foreign language. We can all read, write and understand, but speaking is so hard! Her "English" teacher is also from Australia. We told her that we can't even understand their English haha. We are going to have an intercambio with her and her friend sometime next week. An intercambio is when you go back and fourth between two languages. So we'll talk in English for a few minutes and then switch back to Spanish, and vice versa. It's so funny because she doesn't understand any of our slang and her friend Ines bursted out laughing when we told her we go to school in Wisconsin, because the only "image" she has of Wisconsin is that she loves That 70s Show!

The other night I was riding the elevator in our apt building with a lady and she was so excited that I was American. She introduced me to her two sons that are studying English. I told her I had an American roommate too and she freaked because they never get to practice their English. We are going to have an intercambio next week.

152 peldanos...

1/22-Day 19


Yesterday we went on an excursion to Segovia to see the town and specifically the Roman Aqueduct. It is around 30km and supplies water for the city from the nearby mountains and river. It was made by the Romans solely out of stone, no cement or anything to keep it together. Crazy!

Visited La Iglesia de San Martin.

Catedral de Segovia. The last Gothic cathedral built in Spain.

Alcazar, fortress where the Kings of Castilla y Leon lived.

Protected on three sides because it is on the edge of the city, aka cliff. And there is a moat surrounding it.

Chairs for the King and Queen.

View from the top of the Castile.. 152 steps up a narrow winding stairway. I got a little claustrophobic to say the least.

Looking down on the center where we started.

We also had some free time and did a little shopping and wandered around the city. It is very small and basically has two main streets, so there wasn't a ton else to see. 

Nuestra casa!

Day 14- 1/17

This is my house! Well apartment, people in Spanish live in apartments in the city. We live on the 11th floor and our piso is about 10 minutes from La Plaza Mayor (the city center) and a 35-40 minute walk from school, which isn't bad. It's not that cold here, 30s in the morning, but no wind just lots of fog..hay niebla todo el tiempo hasta febrero. Much better than snow!

This is the fancy living room, salon, and a dining room. We never really go in here. We watched a few movies in there on Sunday and then our WI-FI went out one day so we did a secret operation to unplug everything then pray it worked again. It did!

This is the kitchen. Everything is super modern and sleek looking.

This is where we eat and watch a lot of Spanish TV. We eat lunch around 230pm and dinner around 9pm. During the day watch the news, las noticias, probably like three times. But we also watch Bob Esponja, Spongebob, and Entre Fantamas, a lot. It the Spanish version of Ghost Whisperer show with Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Here is the fridge, microwave, oven and sink. Maria keeps her kitchen very clean and is always sweeping the floor during the commercials. We have pan del dia, every day. People go to the store everyday to buy fresh french bread. It's a little harder than what we would normally get for a loaf so the crumbs go everywhere, thus the chronic sweeping!

This is through the little white door you could see in the last picture. It is her stove with the washer under it. This is basically an enclosed deck room off of the kitchen, it's not heated so she keeps most of her vegetables and garbage out here.

That's it! There's two more bedrooms for Erin and Maria, and one full bath and a 3/4 bath!