The Great Andalusian Road Trip: Parte Uno (Jerez, Roche, y Punta Paloma)

Welcome to the greatest vacation of MY LIFE. This past weekend, I had the privilege of touring the southwest of Andalusia (the southernmost region [autonomous community, if we're to get all technical] of Spain) with four of my friends from SIS (Kane, Tori, Stephanie, and Caprice). The four days that followed were full of incredible views of the ocean and mountains, wonderful memories of getting lost and finding ourselves again, and the joys of the best supermarket in the world: Dia. Due to the length of the trip and the amount of detail I will inevitably be unable to stop myself from going in to (sorry about that; I mostly do it so I can remember these things years later :), I'm splitting this up into multiple blog posts. You´ll probably not want to read this all in one sitting, or not read most of the text at all (don´t worry, I won´t be offended). By the way, before I start, couple of comments. Many thanks to Ana Bello for helping us with the details of renting our car and figuring out the Punta Carnero rental. We couldn't have done it without her! Also, you will note that I've started using semicolons within my parenthesis. The patent is currently pending, so you can still steal the idea if you want (wait, is that true? I'm not really sure how the patent system works, now that I think about it). Also, major props to Lane for letting me know about Picasa's collage function. I downloaded that sucka (by the way, that's what the kids say these days) right away and started collaging away.



We hit the road on Friday, several hours after ending school for the day. Kane, our official driver (shown above), and Tori (also above; smaller, yes, but just as delighted), our CFO, headed up to the airport to grab our rental car and then met the rest of us around 5:30 at our houses. Kane, being the pilot, and I, being the navigator, realized very soon that we didn't even know where to get on the highway, because the directions we had printed started at the center of Sevilla, where we of course were not. We figured it probably be a good idea to pull over (five whole minutes after leaving Los Remedios, Caprice and Steph's neighborhood) and pull out the big guns (the giant roadmap Tori had wisely acquired from Ana Bello).



Here's Kane and I trying to figure out how to get to the highway. Obviously, we ended up finding the highway, but our first detour served as the first indicator that not having internet WALLLLRRRUUUUUUSSSSSS (← props to whoever did this...Haley? Anyhow, this is what happens when you make a habit of posting status updates about walruses for your friends in the student lounge; your blog gets hacked) access to Google Maps would prove to be a challenge. Half an hour before leaving I had downloaded maps to the regions we were visiting using an app called Offmaps, but I found out soon enough that it doesn't hold a candle to Google (for instance, half of the streets in Jerez were missing).



Some of the sights along the way! Top left is us leading Los Remedios, and the rest are pictures along the carretera.

Speaking of Jerez, that was our first stop (besides our initial self-orienting stop at Parque de los Príncipes). We had wanted to find a bodega for Kane in order to try some of Jerez's wine (his family owns a vineyard, and Jerez is known for its wine), but because of our late start, not much seemed to be open by the time we pulled into town. After spending a little time finding the city center, we parked and headed out on foot. I ate my liver pâté bocadillo while we searched for a place to grab dinner (dinner #2 for me).

Our first encounter with a Spaniard on this trip was rather interesting. I saw a younger couple walking towards us and thought it'd be a good idea to ask them about a good place to get dinner and buy wine. The man simply told us to follow him and began to lead us towards what was apparently his go-to for drinks. Moments after starting to follow this guy, I began to get the impression that he wasn't really a man of similar valors to that of Don Quijote. I'm not sure whether it was the fact that he openly called a woman we passed on the street a word that rhymes with "ruta," the fact that he asked us whether we had a lot of money with us, or the fact that he didn't know what a walking bass line was but apparently plays bass (he told us he's in a band), or a combination of all three, but I didn't feel to comfortable around him. Needless to say, after we arrived at the smoky, fluorescent-lit, bar he was recommening, I quickly explained that we hadn't had dinner (one of the first times I used "es que" to start an explanation; slight redemption to the 15 minutes of time we lost on this first escapade!) and we headed out.

From there, we walked farther into the center and found a nice little area called the Alameda (which means "grove" in Spanish). There were three tapas bars/restaurants at the end of the plaza, and all the owners were outside watching us while we tried to decide where to go. Talk about a comfortable situation :) We chose the second one (despite Stephanie's distrust of the owner of that particular bar; I don't know, I liked him :) and had a nice dinner (although it was accompanied with not free bread and not free water; the most awkward aspect of eating out in Europe is the facial expression the waiter gives you when more than one person at the table asks for tap water).

On to our stay for the night. We didn't really know much about this place before getting there, except that it was called Camping Roche, was an hour-ish south-ish of Jerez, and that we needed to be there by 11 pm. Well, we learned a couple more things about Roche quickly. First of all, it's almost impossible to find. Second off, the roads in the area aren't all paved. Thirdly, the foresty area around Roche would make a great night-time setting for a horror movie. Anyhow, 10:45 rolls around and we're still rolling around in the middle of nowhere. After asking a waitress, a bar-frequenter, and a security guard (all in three different locations), we found ourselves on [what I'd have to be almost lying to call] a road. Finally, by the grace of God (really, there's no way we would've found this place on our own), we come upon a gated driveway with a sign that thankfully said Camping Roche. By this time, it was a bit past 11, but who we hoped was the owner was still standing (somewhat ominously) in the doorway to the office. All of us but Kane, who stayed with Rocinante, got out to speak to Ominous Man. He wanted to take our passports, but we were fortunately able to get off with just giving him my ISIC (international student identification card; sounds a lot more official than what it actually is).

20 minutes after arriving at Camping Roche, we were able to accomodate ourselves in our "house" with the lights on (because 10 minutes after arriving at Roche, Kane and Caprice had to go back to the office to ask out how to turn on our electricity). The place wasn't the greatest, but hey, we were tired, and it was home for the night. It was that night that Kane found out that I snored and we both found out the "house" didn't really have much insulation (translate = it was cold). Regardless, we woke up in the morning, paid the rest of our bill (and got scolded for not reading the booking reservation online well enough :), and headed out to try to find a beach.



Here's us outside our place at Camping Roche! That's what our "houses" looked like. What was I talking about? Ah, the beach. Using a map we found at the front office (which was a lot less ominous in the morning), we ventured off to find the Atlantic.

This is the first place we came across! If you want to experience the wonders of the 21st century, click here to see exactly where we were wandering wantonly (well, "wantonly" wasn't what I wanted to write, but the alliteration warranted it).





It was so nice seeing ocean again. It was like eating cream cheese frosting after not having it for a couple of days months. I was pretty stoked on the lighthouse too (most of you probably don't know this, but I'm a big fan of lighthouses; yes, even the occasional Thomas Kinkade lighthouse). As a famous man once said, "Lighthouses rule."



These pictures are artsier. You can tell because they're in black and white.



From there we decided to head down the road and try to find a beach where we could actually get down to the sand. Along the way, we found a whole bunch of antiquated anchors, which got the US Navy's anthem stuck in my head for the rest of the trip. After spending some time watching the girls bench-press anchors (I had pictures of it, but they somehow disappeared), we made our first stop at a Dia. I bought food for multiple meals for exactly 5 euros, and we bought frozen pizzas and other food for lunch and dinner on the group tab for under 4 dollars each! Super barato. And I love it when purchases come out to an exact whole dollar/euro amount. It happens a lot more often here than in the states (because of the whole tax thing).



After the market, we found a beach in the area. It was really pretty but pretty windy so we decided to go back to Rocinante. You can see the lighthouse we were at in the background of the top picture.



Ah, maybe I should explain the name of our trusty steed. Actually, no, I'll leave that up to you to figure out. This would be a good time for a LMGTFY link, but I'll take the liberty to not be that smart-alecky.



Maybe the plethora of wind turbines should have tipped us off that this was a windy area. It was pretty cool driving by all of them, because we don't have too many out by Santa Barbara. And they're a lot prettier in the daytime than in the dark, because at night all you see of them are these agonizingly annoying flashing white lights (although Kane, Tori, and Steph liked them, apparently).

We were actually really glad that we didn't choose to spend our beach time at the windy beach, because we stumbled upon one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever been to. While get closing to Tarifa (a city on the southern coast; we thought for a bit that we were approaching another toll road :), we saw what looked like sand dunes over to the west. We went to investigate, and turns out they were!





It only seemed fitting to eat lunch and hang out here; entonces, we did.







There were so many awesome aspects of this beach. For instance, I loved the plants. We don't have much in the way of tall grass or sweet-smelling honeysuckle bushes growing on our west coast beaches, so seeing Punta Paloma, thriving with verdant (there's a 12th grade vocab word) flora (I feel like you'll appreciate me using that word, Rafa), was truly a privilege.



Here's the whole group!



I was pretty jealous of these paragliders. Imagine the view they got!



Unfortunately, the time came to leave the dunes and head out to our place near Algeciras, located on a stretch of coast called Getares. But that's for the next blog post! Now I need to get some studying in for Grammatica and Tres Culturas! I can haz two tests on Thurzdayz.

Tsa luego!

Sunrise to sunset.

Here's the sunrise from my window. At the end of this post, you'll see a picture of the sunset from my window. Hence, the title of this post.

I have (had) a new tradition that occurs (occurred) whenever I rode (would ride) my Sevici back home (I'm sorry, that was really annoying; I'll try to never do that again). Anyways, near the end of Lopez de Gomara is a stretch of orange trees with particularly low-hanging fruit. Before the city of Sevilla ruined my tradition by sending a crew of a dozen-ish men to pick the oranges off those trees (they do it periodically to most of the orange trees in the city), I would always pick an orange off its branch while riding and drop it into my Sevici's basket. Then, whenever I'd come across a parked Sevici with a orange in the basket, I would snicker to myself. Well, so much for that tradition. By the way, I'm writing/editing this on limited time, so please forgive any grammar mistakes :)



Picture of the river, in case you were wondering.

McDonald's BBQ Chicken Burger. 1€. Awesome. Legit. Other overused positive adjective. That's all.



Here's a picture of people relaxing. Like we will be this weekend. Read on if you want to know more! Extra credit if you can find Claire, Jenna, and Amanda in this picture.

So this weekend (well, in two hours) Kane, Tori, Stephanie, Caprice, and I are heading out on a road trip down south! We're gonna go to Jerez, Gibraltar, Estepona/Marbella, and various villages in the Pueblos Blancos. I'm really excited to see more of Spain and take a bunch of pictures, so the next blog post will probably have some new scenery in it! Also, I realized I have a trip for the next 6 weekends, including and not limited to Toledo, Majorca, Granada, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid (those last three are gonna be with Taisa over my spring break!). I feel like I'm gonna be incredibly exhausted by the end of it all, but am really excited nonetheless. I would love prayer for safety and health throughout that time!



Another reason I'm excited about this weekend? I done with the first wave of tests and presentations. Had my fourth test on Wednesday, and that 50 minute presentation about photography today. We went outside for a little and I did a quick demo for the class (thank you to Jon and Kane for modeling, to Kaitlyn, Allison, and Karina for being flash-holders, and to random guy of the street for Tebowing with Jon and Kane). Regarding the speaking aspect of the presentation, my grammar was pretty atrocious, but hey, it's over. And at least I got to choose what I wanted to talk about!



Something I forgot to mention. I got to play trumpet with a random German guy I met on the street a couple weekends ago! I was riding my bike down this street named Tetuan with a bunch of stores (kind of like their State St., for you Santa Barbara folk), and I heard the sound of a trumpet coming down an alley. I biked up that way to investigate, and saw a blonde guy sitting on a step outside of an old catholic church, hidden amongst the mix of commercial buildings and apartments of the Centro. I waited til the end of his song, and then told him "Bien hecho!", (never know how to punctuate this kind of thing) at which point I realized he didn't speak Spanish. I introduced myself, found out his name was Alex and he was traveling around Europe for a year, told him I played trumpet too, and then made with him to play together the next day. This picture above is the place where we played, in case you're especially curious (taken about a week after the fact, for purposes of my own personal nostalgia :).



A couple more things about Spanish culture. Taxes are already included in the price you see on food, clothes, everything. Even these cookies you see above (the off-brand ones on the right cost 54 euro cents, so naturally I eat them a lot). SO convenient. WYSIWYG. Come on America, get with the program. However, a point that I think America does right is meal times. I was realizing the other day that it's a lot harder to be productive here in the afternoon because we end up eating two meals after school (and they're meals that already generally last longer than those in the states). So, instead of getting lunch quickly out of the way (not saying it's not enjoyable, just saying it can be done quickly) in the midst of classes, lunch and dinner are both after class, knocking a significant number of hours out of the day. Something else that I'm needing to get used to is writing tests on blank paper. That's all we get, several sheets of white printer paper. Apparently that's how all tests are done here, and lined paper is what the kids use in grade school. We got into a discussion about it in Literature, and Salva, our professor, was amazed that we use lined paper at our age in the States.



The things you hear while biking... A while back, I was biking on Argentina when I overheard a Mom saying to her to kids, "Pero, la caca de caballo..." Kind of bummed I missed the end of that conversation.

We were at McDonald's (I'm too lazy right now to look up whether that requires an apostrophe or not, so I'm gonna go with it) earlier this week, but Kane said something that was really funny. Well, I'm gonna say "seemed funny at the moment in light of the context" just in case you don't think it's funny. Anyhow, Kane forgot his money at home, so Caprice gave him her wallet to go buy him and her some food, and Kane's response was: "Caprice, how mad would you be if I paid with your ten instead of with the coins because I don't want to count the fifty cent pieces, because there are six of them? I guess I already counted them. But still, how mad would you be?"



Well, onto the highlight of my week. What an incredible night. Saturday evening a group of us from Iglesia Bautista and various other evangelical churches and ministries in town met up at Puerto Jerez (right by our school) to go pass out food and jackets, and also offer prayer and a phone number for an organization that helps get people off the street in Spain. I was a bit nervous, because I wasn't sure how we would get split into groups, and how the conversations would go, but it became very clear that this was what God had planned for me for the evening.

Our group of six was assigned to go up to the Alameda, an area north of the Centro, but we didn't find anyone homeless people in the area. We kept walking northeast-ish, in hopes of finding someone, and after a while got to a neighborhood of town called Macarena. We finally came to the intersection of two small streets, one of which was kind of darker and had two men sitting on a ledge, about halfway down its length. The girls in our group (we had four girls and two guys) were a bit nervous about approaching two grown men in a dark alley-like street, so they suggested that just Andres and I head down if we wanted to. So, Andres and I started down the street, a little bit warily, and when we got to the men we asked them "Disculpe, ¿Ustedes quieren algo para comer?". One of them responded, a bit confused at what we were asking, and as soon as he spoke I heard a thick Russian accent in his Spanish. I asked them if they spoke Russian, and lo and behold, both of them did! The conversation that followed was the most meaningful conversation I've ever had with strangers in Russian. We gave them both some of the food and juice that we had while Igor (from Latvia) explained that his documentation had been stolen (or so he claimed) and he couldn't get work or open up new papers, and that Nicolai (from Ukraine) didn't have enough money to fly back to his family. Afterwards, we prayed for the two of them, and as we ended I could see tears in Nicolai's eyes. Definitely a powerful experience that left me in those "wow, something really awesome just happened" type of shivers. As Tori put it afterwards, I never thought I would end up speaking this much Russian (almost more than I speak in California) in Spain.

Igor also invited us to come back, since he usually just hangs out in the same place, so last Tuesday after class I biked over to that area again and found him in the very same spot, like he had said. A great conversation that ensued, although I heard probably more words that sound a like the Russian word for pancake and like the English word for "kto" than I've ever heard in my life :) I got a little bit of Russian food from the Russian store (and also met a guy named Anatoliy who's from Brest; unfortunately, he didn't know anyone of the last names that I named for him) for us to eat, and it was SO GOOD! Never thought I'd miss хрен so much :) It was probably a kind of funny sight, now that I think about it, the two of us eating колбаса, черный хлеб, и хрен together on a small Spanish street while Igor recounted his story with a plethora of Russian expletives. Well, all that to say, God definitely made himself clear to me this week. If you could pray for the Lord to soften their hearts, I would really appreciate it!



Well, I need to start packing for our trip, so I should probably come to an end. Here's the sunset. Until next time! Tsa luego!

An Incurable and Infectious Malady.

Hola todos! Welcome to my week. You must be wondering if I've contracted a disease. Well, you'll just have to read this whole post to find out.

But first, some pictures. This is where I live!



This is the Puente de Triana. I think its actual name is Puente de Isabel III or VII or XII or MMMXMVIII, but it leads to Triana so most call it the Puente de Triana. If someone's new to the city, you can usually just say "the circle bridge" and they'll know what you mean (hopefully). Interesting fact about Triana: it used to be its own city and the river wasn't joined by any bridges, so some people still say "I'm going to Sevilla" when they're crossing over the Guadalquivir over towards the Centro.



Ahh. The elephant sculpture. From the bridge, this looks like a modern art elephant. Not as much from this angle, but still. Tyler, I don't know if you're gonna read this at any point, but I'm sticking with my elephant hypothesis.



Crew (if that's what you call this; I just always think Social Network when I see people doing this). Anyhow, because boats don't really come through here, small watercraft traffic is common (that sounds like something out of a boring travel book).



Here's another view of the trendy elephant and circle bridge.



On the left is the Torre del Oro, and on the right is the Torre del Mad Controversy. This skyscraper (currently at about half of its proposed height) is a kind of big subject of late because UNESCO has said it would remove Sevilla's World Heritage status if the building was completed (because it would overshadow the Giralda of the cathedral). It seems like people are pretty divided about it: my host dad approves of it (he says all historical cities, even Paris, have a modern sector with modern buildings) as does one of my professors, but another one of my professors says it's not only a bad choice in terms of culture but also in light of the economic plight of Spain right now.

Okay, now on to my week.

Monday. The convent. Oh boy. So last week, we met the kids that we'd be working with for our Acción Solidaria service learning class. They were great, clearly a bit rowdy, but it was a lot of fun hanging out with them and they were generally cooperative. However, Monday rolls around (my and Jules's day for working at the convent) and they put us both in a classroom and have us teach the kids English, either one kid or two kids to each of us. I started with Rocio, who wanted to learn for about the first fifteen minutes of the hour, and then proceeded to not want to learn. Tania, however, upped the ante a little bit and decided she only wanted to learn for about three minutes (did I use that expression correctly?). It seems that the moment you try to have any authority over them, they cease to be responsive to the things you say; what can I say though, they warned us that this would be the hardest Acción Solidaria site! Regardless, they're really fun kids and also kids that need a lot of love (most of them have parents that couldn't support them or were incarcerated, so their kids were given up to the convent), so I'm hoping that in the weeks to come I'll be able to find ways of teaching them that keep them engaged and keep them having fun. Anyways, I'd love your prayer for that!

I had three tests this week. Needless to say, I'm glad the week's over! I was actually gonna have four, but Salva, our Spanish lit prof, got sick, so it was bumped to next week. I was gonna put a smiley somewhere in there, but don't want to appear heartless. Entonces, next week I'll have that test, and then on Friday I have to give a presentation for fifty minutes in grammar class. I don't think I've ever given a fifty minute presentation in English, let alone Spanish.



For a while now, I have wanted (the past perfect is probably more correct here, but it still doesn't express really well what I intend to say) to visit the "other river" in town (which I have dubbed the Quadlguivir), and this week Kane and I did! Whenever you look at Sevilla in Google Maps (http://g.co/maps/qecza), you see that there are two rivers running through town. Turns out, según Katie Wiggins (one of the great staff members at school!), the "river" we walk over to school every day is really a canal, and the other river is the actual Guadlquivir. I read somewhere that they diverted the original river because it would flood the city in the rainy seasons all too often.



Anyhow, I like this river better than the canal. It's actually blue, and has plants along its river banks (rather than concrete). My kind of river.

I've got a couple other exciting developments from this week to share! A few days back, I went to the Russian store for the third time to get some more chocolate-covered halva with a couple friends, and I spoke with the Russian ladies currently there for a good ten minutes. I got to know the owner (I'm assuming she's the owner, she's the only one I ever see working there), Valentina, a bit, and then also met some nice older Russian ladies that like hanging out/shopping there (Nina and Alla; typical slavic names, in case you're not savvy with your Russian culture facts). Since then, I've gone in two more times, and Valentina refuses to let me pay for the halva! We're friends!! So excited about this.

On to the next subject:



I found practice rooms! They're not free (€59/month), but I really need a place to practice trumpet and piano, and this place is pretty great. I'm also secretly hoping Dr. Shasberger somehow sees this blog post and knows that I'm preparing for orchestra tour (wink wink, Rebecca ;).



This is my favorite piano in the building. Coincidentally, it's also the best-tuned piano in the building. Also, I have a plethora of stands to choose from, should I get picky.



On top of it all, this is my view from the window.

This past Monday (I believe it was Monday, at least...) it was 0°C when I biked to school. That's a bit chillier than I'm used to. Also, today was the first substantially cloudy day we've had. I was even attacked by a few drops of rain while biking to McDonalds this evening. By the way, McDonalds here is classy. They have free WiFi (pronounced "weefee" in Spain) and the inside is rather swanky. Not like McDonalds in the states.

I wanted to share something from Don Quijote with you. Like I've mentioned before, I'm really loving this class! Here's a line from Chapter 6 (in English, just for you) where those closest to Don Quijote are deciding which of his books to burn (because it's due to his books that he's gone crazy and thinks he's a knight).

"'Ah, senor!' said the niece, 'your worship had better order these to be burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping; or, what would be still worse, to turn poet, which they say is an incurable and infectious malady.'"

See what I mean?! Pretty hilarious. Well, I think so. And now you know that I'm not actually suffering from a contagious deadly sickness, but rather have taken up quoting literature (perhaps still a contagious deadly sickness?).

Last topic for the night:



We found good Mexican food!! Ok, by good, I mean good by our Spain standards for Mexican food, but we actually liked the place a lot. The staff were super nice, gave us extra chips on the house ("invita la casa" I believe is the phrase here), let us wear authentic sombreros (they were heavy!) while we ate, gave us all flowers (they gave them to the girls, so I teased them about getting me one -- they left and came back with the female waitress, who gave me a flower :), and had a guy walking around playing guitar and singing Mexican songs. We even tipped. No one tips here, but we were that pleased with the service :)



Ah, here he is! Our favorite guitar player. When we left, the staff told us to come back soon, and I know we will!

They also just called me and said I should get some sleep, so I'm gonna listen.

Adio! Tsa luego!

C'ordeaux Ba.

Hey there. I think it's probably time for me to post again. So here goes nothing. By the way, this was written (will be written, is being written, depending on what Mark is talking at this point) over the course of an afternoon/evening and various comings and goings, so the timeframe might be a little confusing. I'll extend that statement over the whole of my blog posts. They never really seem to get written in one sitting. So now, on to Mark of the past (several hours ago past).

Today, I was biking to here (I really wanted to say that -- also, by "here," I mean Café de Indias) and while I was riding down Calle Something, I collided with a leaf falling from a tree. If I was artsier, I'd say something along the lines of "the fluttering leaf, in the midst of its downward transcendence towards the cobblestones, gently embraced the basket of my crimson bicycle, before drifting to its friends on the ground several moments later." But no, I collided with a leaf. Chocar, if you will. Or would it be atropellar? Hmmmm. There's another question for Carmen (she's our grammar teacher). Anyhow, I really like biking through the city in the afternoon. It's relaxing.

Also during my bike ride, I drafted a tram for about half a second. It was pretty cool.

Well, I figure I'll show you some pictures of our trip last week, and then if you're still interested, you can keep reading the rest of my scattered thoughts después.

Córdoba. The name originates from the French expression "c'ordeaux ba," which means "city of good repute." Okay, maybe not, but it was worth a try. Last Friday (hey, exactly a week ago!) todo el mundo (that means everyone, mom) went on a day trip to Córdoba, about two hours from Sevilla.



And thus begins our trip. This was our bus, and on the left, our pitstop along the way. I got leche manchada, which translates literally to stained milk. But that's how you order coffee when you want a lot of milk in it. We learned that in grammar class. How convenient.



We saw this during our drive. Probably one of the coolest engineery kind of things I've seen here yet. According to the one and only Caleb Hamstra, the mirrors you see on the ground are all parabolic mirrors and focus the sun's light on the tower. Inside the tower is a reservoir of water that gets heated with the mirrors, and then the steam produced makes electricity. AWESOME.



Ah, here we are! Córdoba.



Here are some outside details of the cathedral/mosque I told you about near the end of the last post.



Okay, I know I had a fountain picture in the last post, but I'm having a lot of fun with these. Bear with me.



Some details inside the mosque part of the building.



Now for the cathedral part.



Writing. Glad it's not written in Papyrus ;)



After the cathedral, we headed over to a Jewish museum (our Tres Culturas class deals with Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, so we got to see a bit of all three). These are some views along the walk towards the museum. Note the juxtaposition of complementary colors. Art teachers, hope you're proud!





This was one of my favorite parts of the day. At the end of our tour through the museum, we were able to listen to this guy play and sing a couple of Jewish songs. It was really beautiful (and I don't use that word often). It remind me a lot of some more folksy-genre songs I've heard before. If anyone knows what this instrument is called, let me know!



This, if I understood correctly, is the only Jewish temple that wasn't destroyed during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula. Correct me if I'm wrong, SIS people, because for some reason that fact doesn't seem right to me.



Ventana, hoja. Ventoja.



That wall behind us is older than Kane's age and my age multiplied. Actually, I don't know that.





Fido.







Some of the bros.







Picture time over.

Now I'm at Starbucks. Café de Indias didn't have power outlets, and my battery was dying a tragic not-too-slow death. Just saw a guy walk by outside with the lowest V-neck I've seen in ages. Well, it was a really wide one too. Maybe it was a women's shirt. Who knows.

Let me start that part over.

Now I'm at Starbucks. If I look right above my laptop, I'm looking at Europe's largest cathedral in the afternoon sun. That sounds better than talking about salmon-colored V-neck shirts. Also, if I look right below my laptop, I see a table.

Today after class, Caprice and I went to the Russian store and bought chocolate-covered halva (a typical Russian sweet [the noun, not the adjective]); I think it's crushed sunflower seeds and sugar). They were good.

The other day I learned (by virtue of Wikipedia, whilst researching for one of my grammar class compositions) that much of southern and central California's landscape (a lot of what you see when first heading north of SB) is what they call oak savannah. Lived in Santa Barbara all my life, yet I never knew that. What a shame.

Speaking of research, Michelle, Claire, and I had to give a presentation on Shiite Islam on yesterday. A fifty minute presentation, at that. I don't think I've ever given a fifty minute presentation in English.

I have a bit of bad news, and a bit of good news. We'll start with the bad news. In the beginning of the week I lost one of my gloves. I had it in my jacket pocket after getting to my destination (somewhere in the city, I'm not sure where I was because I don't know when I lost it) and I guess it fell out. Or a left-handed one-handed (in this scenario, the hand that would be gone would be the right hand) pickpocket picked my pocket (say that five times fast) with his previously-ungloved left-hand. In any case, my hands have been about 20 degrees colder than usual whilst (that word reminds me of Zaunius's class in high school when we had a New Zealandish [New Zealish?] exchange student in our class) biking to school this week. This morning was substantially colder than the other mornings this week, and when I got off my bike, I could hardly feel my hands.

Now for the good news. Today, Maricarmen gave me a late birthday present! She bought me gloves!!! What an awesome host mom. We also made pizza together tonight. Except when I got the oregano out, she had this disgusted look on her face. I am convinced that Maricarmen doesn't like any with flavor :) I tried to find if we had basil, but instead quickly found out that the Spanish word for basil isn't "basilico." I looked it up on WordReference so I could ask Maricarmen, and saw that it was "albahaca." However, I accidentally said "albajaca." Turns out, a "jaca" is a pony, and "alba" (like my host sister's name) means white. So I asked if we have any white pony to put on the pizza. Suprisingly, we didn't. And we didn't have basil either.

I went all the way to the top of my building a few days back to see if I could get on the roof. The door at the top was locked of course and the only one of my keys that fit wouldn't open it, but I asked Maricarmen if you can get on the roof and she said yeah! Stayed tuned for 10th-story discoveries in one of the next couple blog posts.

Couple of pretty staggering facts about Christianity in Spain. Según (according to) Marcos (the youth pastor at Iglesia Bautista), only 0.018% of Spain is evangelical Christian. There are over 7,000 cities in Spain that don't have a single person in them who knows the hope that Christ offers. Like I said, pretty staggering… keep Spain and the Christian ministries here in your prayers!

Well, I need to get some sleep. Miss all you guys back home and hope all is well! Panch, Carson, others: do a waffle countdown to some helpless freshman in my honor.

Tsa luego!