Pascua, Paella, Processions, & Party Tunes

It is Easter (or was when I began writing this…) and I have just returned from another glorious long weekend.  Last week was Semana Santa, so we had Thursday and Friday off from classes and thus four free days to explore Spain on one of it’s most famous weeks of the year. Warning: this entry doesn't have too many pictures yet, but I will add them as they arrive!

We started the weekend off on Wednesday night with the big Barcelona vs. Real Madrid football game.  This is a BIG DEAL – my host mom made sure that we ate dinner early (something that never happens) in order that she wouldn’t miss any of it, and literally prayed two times during grace that Madrid would win.  After dinner, my friends and I headed off to 100 Mocaditos to watch the game.  100 Mocaditos is our favorite Spanish chain that sells “cervezas,” fried appetizers, and about 50 options of mini sandwiches.  It’s our favorite place to go to on Wednesday nights because everything on the menu goes on sale for 1 euro, perfect timing for the Wednesday night game and our student budgets!  It was AWESOME to watch the game in Madrid.  The restaurant was absolutely packed and the fans were hilarious – some very enthusiastic boys at the front kept getting in trouble for waving the Madrid flag in front of the television and yelling particularly vulgar chants at the Barcelona team.  It is apparently NOT acceptable to be a Barcelona fan in Madrid…the one fan in the bar was almost kicked out.  To top off the night, Madrid won, meaning they got back the “Copa del Rey” cup for the first time in almost twenty years.  I got a text from my host mom telling me I should go to the Plaza Cibeles, where the city always celebrates after Madrid victories.  We took her advice and found literally thousands of young people in the streets celebrating the victory.  Some of my friends even made it onto the news!  However, it turns out that the Madrid team was celebrating so much that one of the players dropped the famous cup from their bus, which the bus promptly ran over and smashed to pieces.   

Here is the link for a youtube video of the cup breaking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezpFrLWOuDs.  It's a bit hard to see, but I still think this is very indicative of the celebratory tone over here in general =).

The bar during the game - notice the concentration!

Admittedly not my picture, but this is what Plaza Cibeles looked like:  

Next morning, my friends and I hopped on a bus to Nerja, a small beach town perched on the Mediterranean on the southern coast of Spain.  It was unfortunately raining everywhere in Spain, but the city was still absolutely beautiful.  The first night, the woman at our hostal recommended a small seafood restaurant, and because we were all starving we decided to go big and order the menu.  My dinner was phenomenal: refreshing gazpacho, fresh cod sauteed in garlic and olive oil, and homemade flan for dessert. 

Nerja: 

The street our hostal was on: 

Or rainy day on the Nerja beach:

The next morning, we found a tiny café perched on a cliff over the water, where we enjoyed delicious baked goods full of Spain’s famous dulce de leche and the fresh squeezed juice of a number of fruits we’d never heard of before.  After walking around for a bit, we met up with one of the girls in the group’s mom, who is married to a man from Spain.  Apparently they met in Nerja, so the two of them and their best man (who still lives there) took us to a local paella restaurant just outside the town and right on the beach.  I think this might have been the best, and biggest, meal I’ve ever had.  They ordered us pitchers of sangria, black sausage (it’s black because it has cow’s blood!), calamari, pimientos (peppers), and tons and tons of paella that they had been preparing for us all day.  Apparently good paella is cooked in the morning and then sits for several hours in order to enhance the flavors.  I learned the proper way to eat jumbo shrimp: break off the head, suck out the brain, and then get your hands dirty finding the other meat.  We spent the rest of the day exploring the beach in the rain and wandering through the little city.  It’s nice to get a little taste of the Seattle weather every now and then.  We were also lucky enough to get to watch one of the town’s religious processions from our hostal terrace.  The entire town is involved – from tiny kids in costumes to the older men carrying the floats of Jesus and Mary – apparently it is quite and honor and time commitment to be involved.

View from the cute cafe we found: 

PAELLA: 

A blurry photo of the procession:

In front of one of the floats!  (it takes a little concentration to see)

On Saturday, a smaller group of us got up to take a bus to the famous Nerja cuevas (caves).  These were also awesome – an enormous hidden treasure that literally feels like you’re back in the prehistoric ages…although the spooky music playing from a CD in the background probably had something to do with it.  I’ll upload pictures as soon as I get my hands on them!      

Caves!

After taking the bus back Saturday night, my friend and I met up for Easter mass on Sunday morning.  I must say, the mass was nice but it feels a bit more like a business here: you say your prayers, get in a quick 1-minute sermon, receive communion, and you’re good to go for a week.  According to my host mom, they’re trying to get more young people to go to church here, because they always go out partying during the week of Semana Santa instead of going to church.  I do like the amount of participation in the mass though, and especially the priest of sermons seem to always be the go out and have fun because God wants us to be happy! 

After mass we went to tapas at Corte Inglés, a gigantic store I still haven’t been able to figure out because it seems to be a Nordstrom, CVS, Safeway, Whole Foods, bar, café, travel agency, UPS, etc etc combined.  My friends tried the traditional torrija (basically French toast soaked in cinnamon and sugar) and I got a tuna bocadillo at the bar.  I think the waiters were bored and enjoying our company, because they brought us a drink called “tinto de verano” and lots of traditional tapas (basically wine and lemon soda).  One of them jokingly asked us if we believe in love at first sight, and then answered “I didn’t either until I saw you.”  We thought it was particularly hilarious that he used the “vosotros” form of you, meaning he was claiming he didn’t believe in love at first sight until we saw both of us.  Funny how pick-up lines seem to sound better in Spanish…until you translate it and then it sounds just as cheesy :).

So I believe that sums up another nice weekend.  I would document my weeks too, but they’re much closer to life at Stanford.  Class in the morning, lunch with our host families, siesta (I have officially learned to nap here), class in the afternoon until about 6-7, dinner at home, and then good old homework.  Okay, so a bit different, but I am finally feeling like I’m getting into a bit of a routine here.  Plus my host mom has finally gotten comfortable enough to yell at us when she’s upset about things like my not closing the blinds at night (and when I say yell I mean scary Spanish yelling), so it looks like we’re finally getting to be family.  At least that is what I tell myself to make myself feel better :).

I promised my brother Will to send him the cool new songs here, so I figured I’d post them here in case anyone else was interested.  Please ignore the strange youtube videos! (My personal favorite song is the first)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrT1YazVXso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFqaz-GP8WM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1bFaawIH8T4#at=40

Thanks for sticking with my again for another looong post.  I’d love to hear what you are all up to!  Feel free to respond here or send personal emails – I miss all of you!

Annie

Weekends in Paradise - Toledo and San Sebastian

¡Hola amigos!

I apologize for the loooong delay on my part.  I have been getting into the groove of Spain and actual classes (I unfortunately still have these here), the result of which has been limited computer time other than that which is absolutely necessary for homework.  Our program directors in Madrid want us to spend as little time on the computer as possible because, in their words, “we can be on our computers anywhere.”  Though a bit disorienting, I generally agree with their advice!

Okay – back to my new Spanish life.  Last Friday I went to the Prado for my first time.  It is ENORMOUS, so I think I may have to work my way through the museum in shifts.  They have free admission every weekday from 6-8pm, which is awesome for those of us on a student budget.  I saw El Greco (awesome), Velázquez, Rubens, Van Dyck, and other amazing artists.  It was also great to see Las Meninas after going to see Picasso’s renditions of the work in Barcelona.  

Me!...in an awkward tourist photo

On Saturday, my friends and I got up early to take a bus to Toledo.  Toledo is beautiful, basically everything you’d want from a tiny old Spanish town – stone streets too narrow to drive through, warm plazas filled with families drinking sangria (don't worry, not the kids), an gorgeous cathedral and convent, marzipan everywhere (a Toledo classic and one of my favorite treats), and breathtaking views from the top of the walled fortress.  My friends and I followed Rick Stevess advice to just “wander through the town and get lost in the tiny streets.”  We're discovering that Rick Steves is as cool as my mom says he is :).  We finished our day with El Greco’s house and museum, for he lived in Toledo and supposedly died there. 

Toledo!

On Thursday night, after our second week of classes, my friends and I piled into another autobús for a 6-hour journey to San Sebastian.  I may or may not have forced this trip upon the group – I am fascinated with the Basque region and absolutely had to go to the cite of Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises!”  We also met up in San Sebastian with some of my best friends studying in Paris!  Our hostel may have been a bit overwhelmed with the number of Stanford girls, but it was a blast.  San Sebastian is paradise.  We spent the weekend eating gelato, relaxing on the beach, and taking a glorious hike along the coast up to a statue on the top of a hill overlooking the city.  We literally couldn't pull ourselves away from the view for at least an hour.  To my future husband - I plan on honeymooning in San Sebastian.  Period.  End of story.

Tapas!  In San Sebastian, traditional tapas are called "pinchos" and are everywhere.  Basically you walk into a bar, ask for a plate, grab what you want, through your garbage on the floor (seriously, everyone does it), and then pay on the honor's system.  I had some of the best seafood I've ever had.  Crab, gambas (shrimp), cod, sardines, anchovies, and some people in the group even tried baby eels.

The beautiful walk along the water and then hike to the statue:

On Saturday, we went to a bar in San Sebastian to watch the Real Madrid vs. Barcelona football (soccor) game.  This is a HUGE DEAL.  Seriously, all of our host moms were in bars watching the game and probably had been praying for a week in favor of Madrid.  My host mom gave me the "real unbiased scoop," but then swore me to secrecy afterward.  Apparently Madrid used to always win because they have stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, but Barcelona recently got a new coach and now plays better as a team.  After watching the game it was really apparent how true it was that the Barcelona players play beautifully together.  That being said, I think we're all in favor of Barcelona (in particular, el jugador guapo #16)...but we're going to have to be sneaky about this back in Madrid.  

After the game, we all piled onto a bus at 12:30am (to avoid paying for another night at the hostel) and I returned home at 6am to find a juice box and dunkin donut on my desk as an early morning treat.  Our mom is so sweet!  After a much-needed nap, we woke up to go to Palm Sunday mass with our host mom, which we followed with tapas y bebidas (drinks) in a local bar and then lunch.  I am currently procrastinating having to read 50 pages of Cervantes in Spanish...let's just say it's hard to return to "real life" after a weekend on heaven.

I love you all and always love to receive updates, advice, suggestions, or general thoughts about life.  I'm think about every one of you all the time!

Annie

La Semana de Orientación (Orientation Week...)

Hi everyone!

Where to even begin…It´s been less that a week and I already feel like I´ve been thrown into the middle of a crazy, but incredibly amazing, whirlwind.  First of all, I´m going to apologize in advance for typos, bad spelling, and perhaps some accidental Spanish.  The keyboards in the Stanford center are all in Spanish (the autocorrect unfortunately changes things to Spanish and refuses to correct my English spelling) and we have officially signed two contracts requiring that we only speak in Spanish for the remainder of our stay.  That being said, I’m definitely struggling to keep up and understand all the Spanish that´s being thrown at us, including things that I actually need to know like how to call the European 911 number.  I didn´t realize how easy it is to space out to instructions and lectures in Spanish (especially when you´re jetlagged and not allowed to sleep before 2pm because ¨that´s the Spanish way¨)!!  However I´m hoping that I´ll slowly but surely begin to catch up.  I´ve already noticed myself accidentally starting to write things on Facebook in Spanish, and I keep switching around my English grammar.

Okay, back to Orientation week.  After two amazing Lufthansa flights from Seattle to Frankfurt (this airport was hilarious – sausages, chocolates, and cans of dark beer were everywhere) to Madrid, my traveling companion Alyssa and I arrived safe and sound at the Stanford center.  I was so so glad to have Alyssa with me – we survived the insanity of 36 without sleep together (we went straight into orientation after our flight) and navigated the crowded Barajas airport in Madrid where we found a taxi with surprising ease.  Once in the Stanford center, we had to quickly pack our bags for the weekend and then pack into a bus to begin our trip toward Barcelona.  We spent the night at a very strange hotel with a very typical Spanish meal: salad with slices of cheese (probably Kraft) and ham (basically bologna), chicken soaked in grease with French fries and funky dark ketchup, french bread in a sealed plastic bag, and then plain Danon yogurt (all yogurt is Danon here, and it´s literally served at every meal) with fruit for dessert.  Up in the morning for breakfast (again, bread, ham, and cheese) and then off to Barcelona where we arrived at a much nicer hotel for lunch.  The salad was the same and we still had french fries, but I was pleased to experience my first Spanish flan with chocolate sauce.  I should also note here that all of our bus rides were filled with rather complex Spanish grammar lessons – so much for siestas and catching up on that jetlag!

For your enjoyment, here's one of those delicious salads :)

As promised, Barcelona was amazing.  On our first day we went to a lecture on Catalonia “Catalunya: Emblemas de su cultura” by a professor from La Universidad Barna.  We then headed off to the Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya.  Our tour guide was fabulous, and I got to see my first Picasso, Gaudí, Velázquez, etc. up close.  It was amazing to see some of Picasso’s art before the crazy cubism stuff - he’s actually an incredibly diverse artist.  After the museum we had our first free time in the city.  With the help of our Spanish espressos from a gorgeous plaza by our hotel, a big group of us found a cheap tapas restaurant with, of course, free champagne for “las mujeres” (women).  I think we all fell a little bit in love with our Italian bartender Marcos who, of course, turned out to be in a relationship with the enormous male bouncer.  !Como es la vida de españa!  The next day we again loaded onto our favorite autobús to visit the Park Güell with more work by Gaudí.  Next up was the gorgeous Sagrada Familia.  Apparently they only recently finished some of the construction inside the cathedral, so it was truly a spectacular experience.

The entrance to the plaza we ate in:

...the plaza:

The Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya (a view from our bus...ignore the no smoking sign in the window)

A view of Barcelona

And the view from my hotel window in Barcelona

La Sagrada Familia

Our next orientation destination was Costa Brava, specifically the Pladja d’Aro.  The Pladja d’Aro is heaven.  Picture a gorgeous old white hotel on the rocks of a beach overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean.  To top it all off, Stanford treated us to gourmet 3-course meals at the hotel for the entirety of our Costa Brava stay.  I had the best fish stew I’ve ever tasted, fresh fish and bread for every meal, crème brulee, etc etc.  The next day we took a short break from the beach to see el Teatre-Museu Dalí in Figueres.  I had no idea how crazy his art was!  (I promise photos will come later).  Then for dinner, we received another stipend to explore the flavors of Spain on our own on “Stanford’s tab.”  We again dined on tapas and fresh salad this time without ham slices (hoorah!) on the sidewalk of the main street in Costa Brava.  Then, to celebrate the birthday one of the girls in the group, we all headed off to a discoteque.  This was my first discoteque experience, and it really is crazy how even the smallest towns here come to life at night.  But because people here can drink after they’re 16 years old, we’ve found that it often feels like a middle school dance…full of smoking and drinking youngsters.  I think I’m becoming a boring grown-up because my first reaction is to tell them to stay out of trouble and that smoking is bad for you!  So don’t fear, parents, we’ll stay very very far away from the Spanish men after hours J.

Our hotel in the Costa Brava.  Is this real??

The Teatre-Museu Dalí

One of the many interesting pieces of art...

The last day of our pre-Madrid trip was pretty much a long grammar-filled bus ride.  We did stop, however, at el Monasterio de Piedra, which is apparently the first place to come up with the idea of mixing sugar with chocolate (before this, the Mayans etc usually paired chocolate with savory foods).  With my sweet tooth, I think I owe this town A LOT.  Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to sample any chocolate, but we did go on a spectacular hike through the park’s caves and waterfalls.  I literally felt like I was in a Lord of the Rings movie.  Again, pictures will come later.  We also got to watch a bird show with owls and eagles.  I couldn’t really understand too much of what they were saying (aka why this place had birds to begin with) but the show was amazing.  And a bit random…

But at the end of the day, I was most nervous for our return to Madrid and meeting my family.  Luckily I’m in love with my living situation.  My roommate and I are living with one woman and she is adorable.  She’s originally from Ecuador, but fell in love with the city when she was traveling as an art history student throughout Spain.  She speaks Spanish, French, Italian, and English and currently works as a tour guide for a well-known company around Madrid.  I’m so excited to get recommendations from her!!  Apparently she’s given tours to Sandra Bullock (Miss Congeniality), Russell Crowe, and many influential political families.  So cool!  She’s also incredibly sweet and left us chocolates in our room today because she found out we both love sweets.  She also keeps a tin of cookies in our room that she promises will always be full in case we need snacks.  Hosts here are usually very strict about food and kitchens are closed to guests, so it’s really nice of her to be this generous and flexible.  She apparently won’t be around during dinner because she works a ton, but I think it might be nice to eat just with my roommate every once in a while.  Our host mom hires a woman to do all the cooking and cleaning (this is common here), so we’ll just have what she makes us.  My roommate is great as well!  She’s on Stanford’s synchronized swimming team (which just won nationals), so she’s struggling to find a pool to practice.  In the meantime, we’ve been enjoying getting to know each other and it is REALLY nice to have a person living with me.  We have to return to our houses for lunch and dinner because lunch is the most important meal of the day, and it’s much nicer to have a traveling buddy. 

The chocolate our mom left us :)

I just got back from my first day of classes and I’m very tired but excited to begin the routine of my life in Madrid.  It feels great to unpack a bit (my roommate and I had to make two trips on the metro to get our huge suitcases to our apartment) and finally explore my neighborhood.  There’s a huge beautiful park, tons of shopping, several gorgeous churches, and basically everything we need right next to our apartment.  This morning, I went to two classes.  As always, I’m most likely going to go to almost everything, agonize about what to take, and then settle on something I’ll end up enjoying.  Of the two classes I went to I think I’m going to take one – “The Jacobean Star Way and Europe: Society, Politics, and Culture.”  The professor is absolutely wonderful and we get to walk 110 kilometers of the Jacobean Way with students from Spain at the end of the quarter.  I’m pumped.  I’m also planning on taking a class on Spanish Catholicism from our visiting Stanford professor, which will involve many fieldtrips to churches and museums around Madrid.

It’s currently 8:00pm and I’m starving but, of course, dinner isn’t until 9:15.  According to my host mom, “we’re eating a little early while you get used to our schedule here.”  Again, es la vida española.  Well I’m off to dinner, but I am very impressed with your patience if you have made it this far through my long post…brevity has never been my strong point.  I love you all and miss you tons.  Send me messages, life updates, or if you’re feeling brave you can always post on my blog!!

Until next time, xoxo

Annie